Her Happily Ever After - An UNFINISHED Tom Hiddleston Fanfiction
by sherekahnsgirl
Summary: Lacy St. James rooms with an aspiring actress whose brother is Tom Hiddleston. She develops a huge crush on him, but is shy, so does her best to avoid him. Eventually, she gets caught and can't keep doing so. Tom has heard lots about her from his Mom and sisters, although as he moves towards her she always seems to back away. Angst, feels, fluff, romance. WILL REMAIN UNFINISHED.
1. Chapter 1

A/N:

Multi-chapter - **UNFINISHED** , and will not **BE** finished! Unfortunately, my muse has moved on. So if you don't like unfinished works, don't read this.

Fluffy fluff fluff - honestly, it's pretty G rated, especially for me. Romantic Tom more so than anything else - in other words, pretty damned boring - eventually becoming sort of romantic but dominant Tom - although there's honestly not much of that.

So, this is the first six or so chapters of the very first fanfic I ever started about Tom. If you've read my other stuff, you'll see a lot of recurring themes as I've robbed liberally from it for other stories. Sorry for the repetition, but at least I'm consistent! :)

Be warned - this is paced VERY SLOWLY. If you bore easily or are looking for "research" material, read something else of mine or something from laterovaries on tumblr. They'll get the job done much more quickly.

There's not even so much as a kiss until Chapter 4, so that'll help you decide whether or not you want to read it, along with the fact that this will **NEVER BE FINISHED**.

WARNING: The OFC has a lot of angst that Tom helps her with, too, in regards to the death of a loved one.

It had been the best and the worst times of her life over the past two years for Lacy St. James. She had lost the love of her life after only a few alarmingly short years together. He was the man that she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with and instead it ended up being the rest of _his_ life. She had spent the first six months - after he had died in her arms - alone in their bed, sleeping on his side of it, wearing his clothes and reveling in the familiar but fading scent of him, venturing out of their house only when she _absolutely_ had to.

Her family and friends worried about her and staged an intervention long about the fifth month of her self-imposed isolation, each of them hugging her and holding her and telling her how much they missed having her in their lives and spouting platitudes about how her husband wouldn't have wanted her to do what she was doing - wasting away without him, wasting the time she had left instead of living the rest of her life.

Lacy was far from a receptive ear, despite their altruistic motives, and she had practically thrown all of them bodily out of her house. No one took offense at her reaction - they all loved her and had loved Frank, too, and were doing their best to try to understand what she was going through and help her with it.

It wasn't as if she and Frank hadn't discussed what would happen to her when he was gone and he was quite vehement about the fact that he would not be happy with her if she didn't work her way through her grief over losing him and then begin to live her life again - which, as far as he was concerned, included her finding someone special who would treat her as the priceless treasure she had always been to him.

Her annoying friends' plan bore fruit, though, about a month after they had so rudely sought to jolt her out of her depression. At first they began to see her on Facebook occasionally, and then she'd text every once in a while, and gradually, she eased back into her usual routine, although it was a very long hard road back without her love and her best friend beside her.

And it didn't help that she lived in backwoods New England and that the winter was one of the worst on records - piles and piles of snow and ice and record breaking low temperatures hit all over the area, but most fiercely in the foothills of the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire, where she lived - and that helped to push her out of her warm, cozy nest.

One day while she was freezing her ass off taking her puppy out for the billionth time that day in twenty-eight degrees below zero weather, she looked around at her house and realized she was no longer tethered to it in any way, not that she had felt that way while Frank was alive, but he had been sickly from the time she'd met him and thus they had spent the majority of their time at home, only taking occasional short weekend type jaunts early on in their relationship. But as he got sicker and was in more and more pain, he couldn't be away from home even just that much.

And Lacy had been fine with that. She was, at heart, a homebody, and there was no one else in the world that she would have preferred to be home with than Frank. They were soul mates, and always found myriad ways to enjoy themselves - sexual or other wise - and they talked incessantly, never running out of things to say to each other, either.

But that morning she realized that she was free. She felt horribly guilty about that feeling, but it was the God's honest truth. She was far from rich, but thanks to him she was easily doing well enough to afford to go wherever she wanted for a while without it affecting her bottom line in the least.

So, where should she go? she wondered. Hawaii? Frank wouldn't - and couldn't - fly, so they had never gone there and she wanted to go somewhere where she wouldn't have memories of the two of them. But she wasn't very fond of hot weather, either, and the flight from New England would be extremely long, she imagined. The Bahamas? No, she'd been there on her first honeymoon - her starter marriage when she was much too young to get married and much too young to realize that fact - despite having been told that she shouldn't have married the jerk she ended up with.

She'd always been an Anglophile, and had even spent a short amount of time living in England when she was younger - one of the few benefits of her first marriage.

As soon as she thought about it, she knew that she wanted to live in London. It was a bucket list item she had never expected - never really acknowledged - that she wanted, knowing what it would mean about what had happened to Frank if she was to be _able_ to do it.

Flights weren't all the outrageous and she booked an open ended one, got her passport in order, arranged for someone to watch the house and was in the air within the next month. Her friends weren't all that excited about her decision to leave them but at least she wasn't hiding under the covers in bed all the time.

She stayed at a friend's place at first who introduced her to a young actress named Emma Hiddleston who wanted a flatmate to share her place and split expenses. It worked out absolutely perfectly for the both of them because Emma's acting jobs took her all over and Lacy was always be there to take care of the place, lay in groceries, clean the place and water the plants. Lacy lived there. Emma visited occasionally.

She had mentioned that her older brother, Tom, was an actor, but that kind of thing sailed right over Lacy's head until one day she took the time to look him up on IMDB and realized that she knew of him - had seen some of his films - and that he was kind of a big deal since _The Avengers_ in particular. The more she read about him - every single item positively glowing about how polite, articulate, funny and caring he was - the more she began to like him.

 _Really_ like him. She hadn't had a crush in years but this developed into one that she was somewhat embarrassed about having. She was really too old for this shit.

As a result, her roommate's brother became a source of stress to her. She'd never been interested in meeting anyone she'd admired from afar as a fan. What could she say to someone like Benedict Cumberbatch or Billy Joel if she ever met them that hadn't been said to them six ways from Sunday already? She didn't like being physically in a crowd, and she didn't like being one _of_ a crowd, either. The mere thought of meeting Tom Hiddleston gave her the willies in the extreme.

No one who knew her well would ever agree with her that she was a shy person, but she was. She could be outspoken and funny when she was in a small group of people she knew - one of her favorite things to do was to make her sister crack up and do a spit take of whatever she was drinking and Lacy'd gotten very, very good at it over the years - always carefully making sure she never sat _directly across_ from her sister. But cracking wise with her friends who'd all known her forever was entirely different from meeting someone who was A) freaking gorgeous, B) very, very smart, C) freaking gorgeous, D) famous, and E), freaking gorgeous.

She had lived with Em for ten or so months and had quite successfully managed to avoid even so much as being introduced to him. She didn't think her roommate suspected the extent of her awkwardness about the situation but she had been known to quite literally go out a back door while Tom was coming in the front one. Luckily, everyone tended to pay attention to him and she found it relatively easy to sneak away without having crossed paths with him, and no one seemed to be particularly unhappy to realize she'd left - if they noticed it at all, which she doubted.

She knew that her idyll was going to end eventually, but she intended to do her damndest to avoid the man for as long as she could.

She had met both Emma's sister Sarah and their mother, Diana and had even spent some time at Diana's house with the girls, having a great time, just like she was that weekend. She was sitting in the living room while the girls and their mother were fussing with some spring repotting of various potted plants. She had begged off helping because she had the world's blackest thumb, telling them that her ex used to have little funerals for all of the houseplants she'd killed.

But as she was reading quietly in the living room, she heard the five words in the English language that she least wanted to hear while she was there - "Oh my God, it's Tom!" - and as they all dashed out the front door to greet him, she went out the back into the expansive garden with her dog as her excuse - and also to have a cigarette at the same time without anyone pestering her not to.

And she needed that cigarette if she was going to be corralled into meeting this man. Hell, she needed a handful of Valium or Xanax or several stiff drinks or all of the above. She didn't have a car with which to make a getaway, so she was doing her best to steel herself for what was inevitably going to happen.

Her luck had run out.

Long moments later, during which she just got progressively more nervous, Sarah came around the side of the house with her too-beautiful-to-be-believed-even-just-in-jeans-and-a-t-shirt brother in tow, she knew she was caught - in several different ways - but there was nothing to be done about it now.

As soon as she saw her, though, Sarah let go of her brother's arm and stormed towards her. "Is that a cigarette I see?" clearly horrified.

Tom stood politely close by but back a ways, too - well within earshot, trying not to look interested, although he had to admit he was intrigued.

In an exaggeratedly innocent tone, Lacy said, "Why, _no_ , Sarah, you are completely mistaken due to your positively hallucinatory excitement at seeing your brother for the first time in months. I'm sure if you drag the poor man back inside for a few minutes then come right back out again, there'll be no trace of a cigarette anywhere to be found, thus proving my hallucination theory quite neatly."

Sarah just stood there with her hand out expectantly, completely unimpressed by Lacy's diatribe.

Lacy took one last, long drag, leaned down and stubbed the offending cigarette out in the lush lawn then handed it to her, butt first, saying, "Nazi," with no malice whatsoever.

As she collected the damning evidence, Sarah replied, "Addict," in the same tone.

Peewee had come over to make friends with the new arrival, who sank down to his knees to pat her, only to get a smack from his sister who hauled him unceremoniously back up.

"Stand up! I want to introduce you - I've always wanted you two to meet."

"Which is exactly what I've spent the past year or so trying to avoid," Lacy mumbled under her breath, only to get a sharp elbow in her ribs for her troubles from her friend.

"Lacy St. James, this is my best of best friends, my marvelous brother, Tom."

Lacy literally forced herself to extend her hand out as Sarah continued.

"Tom, this is my great friend, Lacy St. James."

Lacy hated every bloody minute of it, but she let her cold, nervous, slightly damp hand be engulfed by his much bigger one, gripped it back firmly, pumping a perfectly respectable twice, then letting go.

He, however, didn't.

She was momentarily horrified that she was unable to withdraw her hand - how did she manage to screw up a simple handshake, for crying out loud? - and instead found it turned so that he could brush his lips against the back of it. "It's nice to finally meet you," he said, sounding disgustingly genuine as he looked down at her with those perpetually smiling eyes of his. "I've heard a lot of wonderful things about you from the ladies in my family, and they're not easily impressed."

"It's very nice to meet you, too, Mr. Hiddleston," Lacy said quietly, a hot blush making her feel even more anxious and earning a look from Sarah.

"Oh, please. Call me Tom."

"Tom. Then you must call me Lacy."

"Now can I pat the dog?" he asked his sister in a typical sibling whine she recognized from her own family, although she was usually the one employing it. He was already sitting on the lawn with the puppy, completely disregarding the immaculate condition of his jeans in favor of playing with her. "She's a doll. What breed is she?"

"She's a Boston Terrier - French Bulldog cross. They're called Frenchtons."

"I saw the Frenchie in her, but I wondered what gave her the long legs."

"Bostons are tall and almost always black and white," Lacy offered, biting back more. She could talk about her dog for days but she wasn't about to let herself get all gabby around him as she might if he were . . . well, almost anyone else. She'd known instinctively that she'd feel uneasy and uncharacteristically inadequate being near him and she'd been absolutely right, unfortunately.

Besides, what was she going to say to him that didn't make her sound like some gushing brainless fangirl?

If he had never arrived, she might well have stayed overnight, indeed, she had been here often enough that she had clothes stashed here in one of the guest rooms that she just left there, although she and Sarah hadn't discussed it specifically in regards to this visit. She knew, though, that, because of his presence, she was going to be excusing herself and going back to London as soon as she could do so without seeming impolite.

"Maybe we should go inside and see if we can help Mum?" Sarah asked.

"You two go on ahead. I'll be in in a minute -" she was already fishing around in her purse for her cigarettes and lighter.

"No, you won't," Sarah warned, looping her arm through Lacy's and forcing her along with Tom - whose arm she had commandeered on her other side - back towards the house.

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be a bully?" Lacy asked no one in particular.

Tom raised his hand high in the air. "Yes."

Lacy laughed, unable to stifle the question. "Poor abused younger brother?"

"Definitely."

Sarah reached out and smacked him for his impudence.

When they got inside, Tom seemed to have disappeared, so it was just the girls - Sarah, her Mom and Lacy - in the kitchen for a while, so Lacy was relaxed and her usual gregarious self. But Tom appeared not long into dinner preparations, so she volunteered to set the table although it ended up not necessarily being the best way to avoid him since the man seemed to constantly be in the way of what she needed to get at and was always having to excuse himself or causing her to have to do so. He did make himself useful, reaching above her head for the stuff on the top shelves, but the fact that he was being nice to her didn't make her feel any more at ease with him. By the end of the exercise, she knew that her cheeks were blazing red again for no real reason at all, just her anxiousness around him.

Nevertheless, she knew she needed something to keep her occupied. "What else can I do, Diana?"

"I think Sarah and I have it well in hand if you and Tom want to relax in the living room for a moment, but it's not going to be long."

 _Oh, joy_.

Lacy had to keep herself from rolling her eyes, lest anyone in the room see her and misinterpret her action. She wasn't rolling them at the family, she was rolling them at herself. How the hell was she going to conduct a conversation with this man when her mouth was bone dry already, her mind completely scattered simply by his presence? She was sure she was going to sound like a complete idiot, no matter what they ended up talking about. At this point she didn't think she could recite her A, B, C's, and she was supposed to carry on a conversation with a man who was as well educated and well read as he was?

That was where Peewee came in, bless her heart. Lacy had never been so happy to have owned that dog. She provided entertainment on a grand scale, pressing Tom into service throwing her toys for her to fetch right back and push into his hand so that he'd throw it again. He seemed enchanted with her, thankfully.

Lacy knew she was sitting there like a bump on a log, but even with the dog helping, she had no idea what to say to him.

"She's really a darling, isn't she," he said, casting a tentative look at her after a few long moments of silence.

"Thank you." Her reply was soft and muted, with none of the peeks at the bubbly, funny personality that he'd seen when she was so obviously more comfortable and heard about from his mom and both of his sisters.

He'd listened to her joining in the give and take of the conversation his sister and their mother always had when they were cooking together and it had intrigued him immensely. He wondered why she considered him such a damper. Whenever Sarah had mentioned her, she'd never said anything about shyness or quietness, in fact it was just the opposite - she was apparently quite likely to say the first thing that came out of her mouth, with hilarious results - despite the fact that Lacy was obviously both of those things, at least around him.

The meal was a relatively simple shepherd's pie recipe with extra mashed potatoes for Tom who loved them and fresh green beans with a slivered almonds and garlic, rolls and a nice wine to go with it. The three of them held up the lion's share of the conversation; it was obvious just how close they were and how much they loved each other. It made her miss her husband and her sister almost to the point of tears, but she knew that if she cried at their dinner table it would have made her downright suicidal so she ruthlessly forced herself not to think about things like that.

Lacy could feel Sarah's quizzical gaze on her throughout, knowing the other woman was wondering if there was something wrong, but she studiously avoided making eye contact with her or anyone else at the table and concentrated on the food, remembering to compliment her hostess lavishly about it - it was one of the few things she actually said during dinner, although they all did their best to try to draw her out.

When Diana suggested it, everyone but Tom adjourned to the living room, leaving him to do the washing up.

"He always gets stuck with that because he's never around to set the table," she explained as they all got up.

He was done in what Lacy considered to be record time and when he appeared and eyed a seat on the couch with Sarah that uncomfortable, unfamiliar nervous feeling crept back into her consciousness after she'd just spent the past few minutes laughing and joking with the others.

Diana asked Tom to get people drinks if they want them before he sat down. His eyes went to Lacy first as the guest. "Something from the bar, Lacy?"

Hearing him say her name had her blushing furiously again - still - yet, which just made her that much more tongue tied when she answered, "Nothing for me, thank you."

Sarah out and out gaped at her in disbelief and there was no way Lacy could let that pass.

"What, am I an alcoholic now, too?" she asked, joking.

"No, but I've never seen you turn down free booze!"

And Diana chimed in with, "I seem to remember a certain weekend when I wasn't here that my supply of gin ran dangerously low . . . "

Playing the innocent again, Lacy looked around the room deliberately, "Well, I'm quite sure I don't have any idea what you mean." Diana looked so dubious as to her innocence that Lacy had to giggle.

Tom was still looking at her, disconcertingly, but she shook her head "no".

"Soda? Milk? Coffee? Water?" he offered instead.

"No thank you. I'm fine." She coughed a few times, dryly.

Diana got Tom talking about his experiences filming in Hollywood, and Lacy coughed a few more times, excusing herself quietly each time.

Tom had stopped talking and was staring at her, which is exactly what she _didn't_ want.

She looked around her again, as if there had to be something more interesting somewhere behind her that he was looking at.

"Are you ok?" He sounded truly concerned.

Lacy smiled a bit too brightly. "I'm fine, thanks. Just go on about your daily business."

He hesitated, still eying at her with a worried look on his face.

Lacy sighed slightly, feeling compelled to explain, "It's the smoking. Sometimes my lungs object. I didn't mean to interrupt you - "

He was sitting on the far end of the couch and she was in the occasional chair at the other end of it and she watched with widening eyes as he sat forward, resting his forearms on his widespread thighs, so that he could give her what she didn't want to interpret as a stern look, but that was definitely what it was. "Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that you have lung problems and yet you still smoke?"

Tom's censorious look and tone had a surprising effect on Lacy as her nipples peaked and her panties dampened instantaneously.

Sarah piped up not very quietly as she rose to get her own purse, "Yes, not only that, but it lowers her immunities terribly and she already has a reduced lung capacity because of it. When she gets a chest cold, it lands her in the Emergency Department every time."

"Wow. You need to take better care of yourself," he chided.

"I know, Tom! Finally, someone who agrees with me!" Sarah yelled from down the hall.

Diana had to put her two pence in. "I agree with you both! I've told her myself that she should quit smoking."

Feeling just a bit ganged up on with the three of them looking at her accusingly, Lacy protested, "I've cut down a lot! I have!"

That didn't seem to placate any of them in the least - Tom least of all, surprisingly.

And then Sarah, who was on her way back to the living room, had to chime in helpfully with, "Not so far as I can tell."

"Nobody asked you!" Sarah had arrived back in the living room and walked over to her friend with her hand out expectantly for the second time in less than an hour and Lacy sighed. "Do you know how much money I go through replacing the cigarettes you take off me every time you see me? I could have bought a friggin' yacht by now . . . "

But she dutifully dug into her purse and handed over her pink floral case with its pink lighter, which Sarah tucked into her own purse. "Hey, wait, I want the case and the lighter back - "

"No you don't."

Lacy _did_ roll her eyes at that, and she didn't give a damn who saw her this time, either.

"Do I need to conduct a raid on your flat and confiscate contraband? Again?"

"No?" Lacy answered hopefully, batting her eyelashes at Sarah. "How much can I pay you not to, dearest darling honey?" she asked with very faux sweetness through tightly clenched teeth.

"I won't make you use the whole ninety-eight pence in your account on me, dearest," Sarah replied back in the same sickly sweet manner.

Heaving a big dramatic sigh, Lacy said, "All right, all right, I'll quit. I'll buy the stupid gum and the annoying patches. Lots and lots of patches. I'll make Sherlock look like an amateur with his three patches. You'll come over one day and I'll be covered in gum and chewing on the patches," they all chuckled, which was what she had been going for, "but at least I won't be smoking." Then she stuck her tongue out rudely at the woman who had become one of her best friends, who, of course, promptly stuck hers out back at Lacy.

"How old are you two?" Tom asked no one in particular, although there was a smile on his face as he said it. "Eight? Five?"

"Somewhere in there."

The conversation hit a lull, and Lacy glanced at the clock and rose. "I think I'll be heading back now, ladies - and gentleman," she amended hurriedly. "If you'll drive me into town, Sarah, I can catch the four-forty-five back."

The women weren't willing to let her go, having assumed she would be staying for the weekend. But Lacy was adamant about needing to get back, referencing a deadline that she knew Sarah would probably see through but no one else would.

Then all hell broke loose, as far as she was concerned, when Tom decided to do the gracious, gentlemanly thing and offered to drive her back in his car since he had things to do in town, too.

Damn his disgustingly polite, beautiful hide! There wasn't an easy way out of this was there? Maybe there was.

"But the dog - you wouldn't want her shedding all over your gorgeous car . . . " she began, addressing Tom but deliberately looking at the dog instead.

She could see him smile out of the corner of her eye. "It needs to be cleaned out anyway, which I was going to do this week, so I don't much care."

 _Son of a bitch_.

There really wasn't any graceful way out at all, because she certainly didn't want to insult any of them, which meant she was well and truly caught. One look at Sarah showed her sporting a smug expression, as if she'd planned this all the time, and Lacy wasn't at all sure that she'd put it past her to have done exactly that.

Within minutes the dog was made comfortable in what there was of the back seat of the small sports car, her purse was stored back there, too, for easy access, then she found herself hugging Sarah and then Diana and thanking them both profusely, promising - as they made Tom do, too - to return for a full weekend in the very near future. Lacy thanked God for small favors in that at least she was being spared - for now - the awkward business of whether or not she was going to have to hug him, but instead found him standing at her door, ready to assist her into the car.

Trying to be as graceful as she could - which she knew wasn't very - she did hold onto his hand a bit, extremely grateful that she was in jeans and not the tiny skirt she'd debated wearing as she wedged herself into the small but luxurious space.

"This is a gorgeous car!" she heard herself gush when he got behind the wheel. If she was going to fangirl in front of him she was just as happy to do it over the car instead of him.

"Thank you. I like it."


	2. Chapter 2

"We're going to need to make a stop for petrol before we get on the motorway," he mentioned, turning them into a BP station.

Lacy immediately offered to pay for the gas - petrol, she corrected, translating American into British for him - but Tom shook his head, saying, "No need for that, thank you," as he reached into his pocket for his money clip, which was really just a bulldog clip - nothing fancy.

But Lacy was quicker than he was and he wasn't thinking she was going to do it, so she got our of the car, swiped her card and began pumping it before he'd gotten out and come around the car.

She took a step away from the nozzle. "Here hold this. I'm going to go wash my hands - they smell like eau de high test - then I'll come back and see to the dog. Can I get you anything? Water, maybe? Spring? Sparkling? Flavored? If so what flavor? Tap? Distilled -"

He interrupted her rambling list. "Spring, please." He doesn't look as happy as he did when they left, and she has a feeling that she hasn't necessarily made a good impression on him by trumping him as she had.

Too bad, so sad, she thought to herself.

Tom fished into his wallet to offer her money for whatever it was she was going to get in the store, but she just walked away with a soft, "No, thank you," inordinately pleased with herself for having circumvented his perpetually courteous tendencies, for some reason.

The dog was surprisingly cooperative about doing what she needed to do, and they were on the road again pretty quickly.

"Thank you for paying for petrol and drinks," he said into the somewhat awkward quietness that had descended between them.

"You're welcome. It's the least I could do."

"No, the least you could have done would be to have let me pay, as I offered," he pointed out neutrally.

"Why? I'm the one who's imposing on you with both myself and my dog. By the time she's finished shedding back there you're going to be able to build yourself a cocker spaniel."

He chuckled. "Why don't you help yourself to the stereo? It's got bluetooth if you want to play some music."

Lacy gave him a sidelong glance and was close to turning him down but something made her reconsider. "Okay, but I'm going to warn you up front that I'm going to sing. Not well, mind you, but very enthusiastically; it forces me to expand my lungs."

He was smiling again, which seemed to be his default facial expression. "Fine with me. I'll join you if I know the song. Who do you listen to?"

Lacy shrugged as she searched for the car's stereo on her phone to connect with it, happy to have something to do other than trying not to stare at him. "I have pretty eclectic tastes. I have a lot of soundtracks from musicals, you know, _Oklahoma_ , _Music Man_ , etc.. I have _Jesus Christ Superstar_ \- the Broadway version from 1970. But I won't subject you to any of those, I promise. This playlist is just my favorites - Avril LaVigne, Sugarland, Garth Brooks, Frank Sinatra, Buckcherry, My Chemical Romance, Patsy Cline, Passenger, Maroon 5, Train, ELO, The Beatles, Snow Patrol, Elton John, Adele, Lady Gaga . . ."

"Whew. Lots of oldies in there. I like that."

"Yeah, well, my oldest older sister infected me with those. It's all her fault."

"And you weren't kidding about the eclectic. Sounds like one of my playlists."

She futzed a bit more with her phone and soon _Rebel Beat_ by the Goo Goo Dolls filled the car. He'd never heard it before and quickly decided he liked it. Lacy leaned back in her seat, appearing almost relaxed in his presence for the first time. Her face was turned away from him, but her voice bounced off the window and back to his ears and it was a very nice one - better than his by far. The next song that came up was one he knew, _Breathe_ by Anna Nalick and although he intended to use this time to get to know the woman who was living with his sister a lot better, he waited until she'd finished singing the soulful ballad.

He'd noticed that she did her best to hit every note and every word perfectly but that she couldn't always sustain a note as long as the singer did, which was evidence of her lung problems, he imagined. Still, she did a wonderful job with the song and he actually clapped at the end.

Lacy's face, which had just died down to a normal temperature and color, became beet red again immediately as she buried it in her hands. "Oh good Lord, stop that!"

"What? You have a beautiful voice with a nice range. I'm surprised you're not a singer."

Lacy snorted. "I could never sing in front of a crowd. I could never do much of anything in front of a crowd." And, of course, she was saying this to a man who had charmed seven thousand fans all at once at ComiCon in San Diego. He would have no idea what she was talking about since he hardly suffered from stage fright.

But he nodded empathetically anyway. "I think a lot of people feel like you do."

"Except you."

He shrugged, smiling. "I'm a ham. I like the attention, although I do get nervous before a performance, especially when I'm on stage."

"I'm not surprised. But you overcome it, obviously."

"It's not so bad once you've done it and you realize you're still alive afterwards."

Lacy chuckled. "Sounds like me getting on a roller coaster."

"You? Roller coasters?" he asked, incredulity in his tone.

"I friggin' love them! The bigger and faster the better." If she'd known him better, she'd've added a dirty spin on that last phrase, but she didn't so she kept her innuendo to herself.

He was grinning. "I wouldn't have pegged you for an excitement junky, somehow."

She shrugged. "You don't know me well enough to peg me as much of anything."

He gave her a sideways glance. "No, I don't, but I'd like too get to know you better since you're living with my little sister, and I thought we might spend some time doing that now, since we're kind of trapped together."

She slowly became a bit more relaxed around him. He had a very easy going, accepting way about him that made her feel as if she was talking to his Mom or one of his sisters.

"I think that's a good idea. I could definitely be an axe murderer in my spare time. Very big brotherish of you, being protective of her, by the way. Big points in your favor for that. Want a copy of my CV?" she offered.

"No."

"Good, because I don't have one." She turned to check on the dog, grab her water and dig a Kleenex packet out of her purse but the car was so tiny that every time she turned towards the back - which she had to do frequently to see to the dog or get into her purse - she ended up touching him somehow and somewhere, which had her embarrassment flaring again.

She knew he could feel her breast press against his upper arm, especially when she practically had to cram herself back there to take a stray bottle cap away from the dog who loved to chew on them.

So she decided to tackle the embarrassing situation head on, what the hell, saying, "I'm really not trying to fondle you. I'm just reaching for my water and saving the dog from choking."

She heard him chortle kind of nervously and she was very happy when she was finally able to sit back in her seat. Lacy took a swig of her water and turned slightly towards him in her seat. "Okay, shoot. Your family says you have no boundaries, that you'll say yes to doing anything. Well, I'm very comfortable talking about almost any aspect of my life - it's a ninety-nine-point-nine percent open book, so be careful about what you ask me and make sure you really want to hear the answer. A.M.A."

"What's the other point one percent?"

"None of your business," she said mildly.

"Okay. What's the Kleenex for?"

"Because I've lost a lot of people that I loved very dearly and I know me. If I'm going to talk to you about my life, I'm very definitely going to cry. I cry easily and I don't apologize for it any more. What's the point of life if not to feel things? How can you know the good is really good unless you've also felt the really bad?"

Now that he apparently didn't make her feel as uneasy any more, she was a bit more self confident, and he liked that a lot. She was also painfully sensitive and honest with herself - and with him as far as he could tell. It didn't sound like she shied away from expressing her emotions and he liked that, too, although he vowed to himself that he was going to try to get through the conversation without making her cry. "So, where and when were you born?"

"Wow, you're going to make me feel old right off the bat, huh? I was born on the twenty fifth of July in the year nineteen-twelvty."

He laughed, but called her on it. "That's cheating!"

"Okay, I was born in nineteen-hmoishyph." She mumbled something incoherent through fingers that were deliberately obscuring what she was supposedly trying to say.

" _Still_ cheating."

"Okay, okay, I'm forty. One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Happy?"

He gave her a serious look. "Yeah, actually I am. Please continue."

"I was born in New Hampshire - a tiny little state in New England - that's become a bedroom community for Boston nowadays. It was much more rural when I lived there, although where I live it's still plenty rural."

"Is that where your Mum and Dad are now?"

"They're dead, but they're buried there, so I guess you could say so."

Five seconds into the conversation and he'd already hit on a tender subject. This did not bode well for the rest of the ride. "Oh, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. I was blessed to have them while I did. I had a great childhood and an awesome family life. My parents adored each other and weren't afraid to show it. They walked hand in hand down the beach on vacation at Hampton Beach - holiday - every year." She was beginning to mist up and it was making her voice husky, but she didn't stop. "They danced - very, very badly - in the itty bitty living room of the house I grew up in, laughing uproariously the whole time . . . " She cleared her throat and her voice came back some. She just let the tears trail down her cheeks, knowing that in the course of this conversation with him that there were likely to be more.

A lot more.

Tom ached for her loss. Her parents sounded truly wonderful. He envied her having had two parents that were obviously so much in love. "They sound like two very special people. Siblings?"

"Two older sisters, I'm very much the baby of the family, still. Jessica is the oldest, she's nine years older than I am and if you've met me, you've met her, really. We're very alike. Rose is five years older than I am and she's not like anyone else in the family."

"Black sheep?"

"Yeah, something like that. We always joked that she was the mailman's kid or something like that."

He smiled at that, of course. "School?"

"I have a high school diploma but no college degree."

He was surprised. She certainly seemed intelligent enough to have gone to college. "Why not?"

She grinned unrepentantly. "Because I'm lazy and I don't like to be told what to do."

The look he gave her was incredulous. "A wee bit stubborn, are you lass?" he asked in an excellent Scottish accent.

"A wee bit," she answered, not attempting any kind of accent. She knew her limitations.

He was quiet for a moment while negotiating their way through traffic. "So, a harder, but more pertinent question: do you do drugs?"

"I've used marijuana - it's what Frank used to help control the pain. He eschewed the narcotics they wanted to give him until the very end because they made him sick, and when they didn't, he was so zoned out he was barely functional. So he chose a more natural method, although its effects weren't nearly long lasting enough. And he didn't like to do it alone, so I did it with him." His face was almost too carefully neutral. "Medical marijuana is legal in New Hampshire. He had a prescription for it. And I haven't and won't do anything harder, especially now that Frank's gone - I don't even smoke pot any more and I barely drink. I don't much like being out of control."

All Tom did was nod. Who was he to judge what she and her husband had been through? "So what do you do?"

"I ghost write."

"Non-fiction?"

"Yep. Biographies mostly."

"Anything I've read?"

"I highly doubt it."

"But you're doing well at it, apparently."

"Well enough that I could come here, to where I most wanted to be, after . . ."

He wasn't thinking. "After what?"

Lacy looked down, fiddling with her hands in her lap. "After my husband died."

Tom sighed. Lovely. Another minefield he'd stumbled into. "Oh, right. I'm sorry. I seem to be saying that a lot in this conversation."

"Thank you, but don't worry about it. It happened and I'm . . . " she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, "dealing with it - badly - but I get up out of bed in the morning, at least. That's considerably better than I was for the first six months after he died."

Out of instinct more than anything else, Tom reached over and took possession of her nearest hand, holding it gently in his. "Do you mind talking about him?" He had to admit to having a certain amount of curiosity about the guy. He'd heard nothing but praise about her from his family, who spoke of her strength of character and selfless devotion to her husband, although he obviously hadn't heard the whole story. He had to admit to a certain amount of jealousy - he had yet to find that kind of love himself, and he wasn't getting any younger.

"No, not at all." Her voice was going again. "I'll cry, but I love to talk about him, you know? It kind of . . . keeps him alive for me. I don't ever want to forget him."

"How'd you two meet?" He hadn't released her hand and didn't intend to unless she insisted, squeezing it a few times then taking the bold step of lacing his long, slim fingers through her smaller ones.

"My work was big on doing things for the troops and one of them was a pen pal program. So I wrote a letter and he got it and sent me back his email address and it was all over from there. He was literate and smart and funny and quirky and I was stone cold in love with him from his first letter. Eventually it developed into the inevitable, amazingly long phone sex - uh, calls." She knew she was turning red at that Freudian slip, and she heard his soft laugh. "Okay, both. But we were thousands of miles away from each other, at that point, although his parents lived in New Hampshire where I was, living with my sister after I broke up with my first husband."

"You've been married twice?"

"Yeah, I kind of consider the first one to be a starter marriage. It was about a sixty-forty good to bad ratio. Christian was very smart and goal oriented - which could be a distinct advantage in some aspects of the relationship," she didn't elaborate any further about that, though, "and funny and we liked a lot of the same things and -" he was friggin' amazing in bed, but she didn't say that to him, "so I married him. Bad idea."

"Yeah?" His gaze darted to her from the road for a second. A thought crossed his mind and he was reluctant to ask it, but he almost felt he had to know. "Did he abuse you?"

"No, not physically anyway, but emotionally and psychologically, yes. It seemed as if, as soon as he married me, he wanted to be anywhere _but_ with me - preferably with another woman."

"Oh, man. I'm sorry." More gentle squeezes.

"Yeah. He had absolutely no idea of the concept of fidelity at all. But, in all fairness, it wasn't always bad. When I finally left him - long after I should have - I went to live with my sister and Frank fell into my lap a couple years later."

"He did?"

"Yeah, I've never really gone looking for any of the relationships I've been in - not that there have been many. They've found me. I'm perfectly happy on my own - I'm self-motivated in regards to work, I can entertain myself endlessly on the internet . . . I'm not like a lot of people who have to be in a relationship all the time. As a matter of fact, between my first husband and my second, I swore up and down that I would never, ever, never, ever get married again. I am, therefore, the poster child for the idiom, 'never say never'."

"So he was thousands of miles away in the desert - at war - how'd you and Frank get together?"

"Both of his lower legs - from below the knee down - were blown off by an I.E.D. He'd lost a lot of blood while he was in the field waiting to be rescued. He was okay - medically stable - when he'd arrived at Walter Reid, but he got an infection soon after and we almost lost him multiple times before he was able to be released. I hadn't heard from him in a while and I was frantic. His mother knew about me - he'd talked to her about me - and she got in touch because she was disabled and couldn't make the trip. I was in D.C. the next day."

"Jesus, Lacy."

Her head was down and he could see dark splotches on her shirt where tears had splashed down on them. "It didn't matter to me - none of it did. I was just so happy to be with him. The infections damaged his joints so badly that he ended up in a wheelchair because the prosthetics were excruciatingly painful, which I didn't care about, either. All I wanted in this whole world was just to be in his company. Nothing else really mattered, and he felt the same about me." Her voice had faded to barely a whisper by her last words, and he kept doing what little he could, trying to convey his empathy by use of his hand on hers alone.

There were tears in his eyes, too, at the depth of emotion in her voice, which he ruthlessly blinked back, deciding to change the subject to something more neutral. "So how did you end up coming here?"

She had used up her Kleenex already, and she had to lean all over him to retrieve some more. "Again, not trying to feel you up. I just need to blow my nose."

He knew that it was ending up that, if anyone was being fondled it was her because he could feel the round warmth of her breast, smell the soft floral fragrance of her perfume every time she did this, and his body was only too happy for the close confines of the car, frankly. "Well, I wanted to go somewhere where I didn't have memories with Frank or Christian. And I don't like weather that's too hot or humid, so that eliminated a lot of places right there. I've always wanted to live in London, so I figured what the heck. There wasn't anyone to tell me not to."

"Good for you."

She smiled and her whole face lit up, despite the tracks of tears that were still clearly evident down the pretty slopes of her cheeks. Tom found his breath caught in his throat and he knew that he was lost from that moment on, knowing he always wanted to see her smiling like that, preferrably because of something he'd said or done.

He kept his questions very light from that point on, getting more serious about trying not to make her cry - again - and he actually got a few laughs. She seemed to have finally gotten comfortable around him, and he was glad of it.

 _December 1963_ came up on the stereo and they both belted it out - she was rocking out big time - swaying to the music, tapping her foot and moving her arms - carefully so she didn't smack him.

He gave her a broad smile and she explained with a big ole' grin, "Car dancing! My sister and I used to do it all the time on long trips."

"You must love to dance."

That had her giggling. "Good Gawd no."

"You don't dance?" Tom thought she was doing a reasonable job of it considering they were in a small car.

"No, I don't."

He decided to go for broke. Nothing venture, etc. "But would you come with me to a club if I invited you sometime? Em and I go out with friends sometimes - a mix of mine and hers."

Her world stopped abruptly and anxiety set her heart to banging against her chest again. "To a dance club?"

"Yes," he smiled.

"With you?"

"Me and Em, probably, and three or four other people at least." He'd hoped that the fact that he'd essentially said that it wasn't going to be a date might prompt her to say yes.

"No, thank you," she answered primly.

Not dancing was a concern, although he had a feeling that if he prodded her gently enough he could probably get her to go - and he'd damned well ensure that she enjoyed it if she ever did.

It had been a while since he had been flatly turned down by a woman. It was probably good for him, but he wished the life lesson in rejection hadn't started with this particular woman.

They both remained quiet for a while until she yawned loudly and blushed - again. "Damn, I'm sorry. It's not the company, it's the blasted dog."

He looked puzzled. "The dog?" he asked, reaching over to pat the beast who had taken up residence on her mistress's lap.

He was only touching the dog, but he might as well have been cupping the area right beneath her, between her legs, in those beautifully elegant fingers of his. Her entire body contracted almost painfully and she was very glad there was no way for him to tell what was happening to her.

Oh, damn. He probably expected a response to his query, too, demanding sort that he was. His damned fingers had befuddled her mind. "Yeah, she's been getting me up extra early to go out first thing in the morning for some reason. I'm diurnal - mostly - but six o'clock in the morning is inhumanely early even for me."

"Feel free to nap if you'd like," he offered. "I think I have a blanket in the back."

She snorted then scolded herself inwardly for doing that in front of him, although that ship had definitely sailed. "Yeah, well, someone's already been using it and you'll have to have it cleaned - or I can do that for you."

His frown was fierce. "No you won't."

"And thank you for the offer, but I can't sleep in cars or on a plane - or anywhere else Dr. Seuss might have mentioned."

"Why not?"

She stretched - as well as she could in the cramped quarters - and he had a hard time not noticing her body as she did it, although he tried to leer as surreptitiously as possible. He didn't want to make her revert to being uncomfortable around him again as she had been.

"Same reason I don't do drugs or drink much when I'm not home. I'm too much of a control freak." She didn't mention that part of her rationale was that she had no idea what kind of a driver he was because she didn't want to insult him.

A few minutes later, he came out unexpectedly with, "Do you want to drive?"

Lacy had been staring out the window, singing beautifully along with Carrie Underwood's _Just a Dream_ when she heard him ask her if she wanted to drive his amazing - and amazingly expensive - sports car. Her head whipped around and she met his eyes, watching the crestfallen look overtake his usual sunny expression when he realized that she was crying and he hadn't even known about it.

"It's this song. It always makes me cry," she explained moistly, brushing the tears away quickly.

He didn't look convinced.

She'd never driven a really nice car, and was very tempted, biting her lip and looking at the steering wheel, the dashboard, anywhere but the vast cavern between those long legs of his. Just as a reason to keep her eyes from wandering where they really, really shouldn't, Lacy said, "I'd give my left nut to drive this thing!"

"Um, I haven't really checked, but I don't think you have one to give. At least, I hope you don't . . ." Pleasantly surprised that she'd agreed, he found a place where they could pull over, got out and practically sprinted around the car, opening her door for her and offering his hand.

She didn't want to take it this time either, but the car was so close to the ground that she didn't have much choice. But he didn't stop there. He kept possession of her hand while he guided her around the car then helped her into the driver's seat, closing the car door behind her and jogging back around to the passenger's side.

She took her time getting ready, adjusting her seat and laughing the whole time. "Do you realize that I can't even reach the pedals in this thing you had the seat so far back?! Good grief!"

When she was ready, had adjusted all the mirrors and familiarized herself with the controls, Lacy turned to him. "You sure you want me to do this?"

He nodded immediately, no hesitation whatsoever. "I trust you."

Her smile was his reward. "Then you're a lot dumber than you look, Thomas. I come from a country where we drive on the whole _other_ side of the road."

He didn't look worried. "I know this is a little late, but you do know how to drive a stick?"

Lacy blushed first, furiously, then giggled. "Uh, do I get points for not riffing on the double entendre contained therein?"

He smiled wolfishly, but said, "For not riffing on it? Definitely not!"

Lacy stuck her tongue out at him. "I used to, but I haven't driven one in quite a few years." She smiled at him again. "I shall endeavor to leave you with at least some semblance of a clutch with which to drive us the rest of the way home."

Before she pulled out into traffic, Lacy reached for her phone, which had fallen to the floor of the passenger's side. Without thinking she kind of lunged for it, her hand unintentionally following the line of his closest leg - which she noticed he didn't bother to move - until she could finally feel the phone on the floor mat.

Sitting up and blushing yet again, she mumbled very shyly, deliberately looking at the phone rather than him, "Again, not trying to feel you up - just getting my phone."

His grin was pure wicked when she looked up at him at the sound of his voice. "Aw, not even just a little?" he teased finally and she blushed even more wildly, laughing.

"Hell no!" Since she was looking at the road, she missed his stunned expression at her vehemence. "You're just a baby. How old are you, eleven?"

It was his turn to snort. "I'm thirty-three - well, I will be shortly, anyway."

"I figured somewhere in there. But from this ancient summit, you might as well be eleven." She handed him her phone. "Here, look through my playlists for something you want to listen to or put something on of your own. I don't care."

The car was a dream to drive, sleek and powerful with a throaty rumble . . . it reminded her of him, and she _loved_ it - a little - no, a lot - too much.

"Okay, well, this was a mistake," she said only a short while into the drive.

"Why?"

"Because I really _love_ this car. I now understand why cars like this are considered to be penis substitutes. This must be what it's like to drive one of those things."

She certainly had him laughing a lot. "I don't believe I'll comment on that line. But where's the bad?"

"Do you know what kind of car I have at home?"

"No."

"I have a minivan, so that there would be enough room when we stowed one of the seats in back for a wheelchair and cargo doors that were electric so that he could be independent and go out without me and still be able to get his wheelchair out of the car to go into a store or whatever. I can't go from driving this car to driving a minivan. It would be . . . sacrilege."

Tom didn't say anything - he couldn't think of anything to say, and Lacy just sighed, realizing that this was a mistake. She pulled over into the next layby she saw. "Let's trade back. Thank you for letting me drive it." She was already out of the driver's seat before he was able to get there and help her out, but he remained where he was to help her in once he got out.

Frank had treated her just like this, to every extent that he could, observing every possible courtesy, even the old fashioned ones that might have tagged him as a chauvinist, and she knew she could definitely get used to it again, especially from a man like Tom.

The rest of the ride was quieter and he'd actually thought she might have gone to sleep but as he parked in front of her building, she was already gathering her things and seeing to the dog.

He got out of the car as she protested that he didn't need to, but he was already coming around to open her door and help her out. Tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow, he said entirely too intimately, somehow, "A gentleman always walks a lady to her door."

When they got to her flat, he took her keys from her and opened the door, checking around the place like an endearingly protective boyfriend, then returning to where she stood in the doorway to press the keys into her hand and stand in front of her. Lacy knew she was standing there, staring up at him like a brainless dolt, but she didn't think she'd ever get used to how tall he was.

She caught her breath at his expression as he stared back down at her, which was distinctly stern all of a sudden. "Do you need Loki to tell you to stop smoking?"

She cracked up at that, giggling up at him, then forcing her face into a playfully serious expression. "No, thank you. I think I'm good."

She expected that he was then going to duck out the door, but instead she heard him ask almost shyly, "Would you mind if I asked you for a hug? I could really use one."

Tom was delighted when, after the smallest of hesitations, she stepped forward and gave him a very real hug - like his for her. He'd bent his open legs a little so that she could come close enough to easily put her arms around his neck. He rocked them just a bit back and forth and rubbed her back up and down three times, drinking in the smell of soap and a very light, floral perfume that she seemed to be surrounded by. After a much longer moment than he'd anticipated - not that he was complaining - and even though he would have sworn that she was clinging to him a little bit - she was the one who retreated first, stepping away from him.

He let her go immediately. The last thing he needed her to think was that he was trying to cop a feel. "That was lovely, thank you. Just what I needed."

She knew she was blushing again at his compliment, but did her best to ignore it. "Thank you very much for driving us. I appreciate it."

He was already out the door, but he turned around to face her as he walked backwards down the hall. "You're very welcome, darling. See you later."

Lacy closed the door and sagged back against it. She'd done it - she'd met Mr. Charming Sexy Movie Star and had survived the experience _mostly_ intact.

But she also knew he was going to be big, big trouble for her.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been a surprisingly busy day. She was working to a deadline and trying to get it all done by the end of this week because Tom's Mum was throwing him a birthday party, to which she'd been invited once via post and then again when his Mum called her a few days ago to say she really wanted her to attend.

Lacy had assured Diana that she would definitely be there early Friday afternoon to help out with setting up for the party, and that she'd probably stay at least overnight if there were enough rooms to go around, and she was assured that there were more than enough and that she should plan on staying the entire weekend.

But that hadn't been the extent of the concerted effort the Hiddleston clan put forth to make sure she was going to be in attendance. Sarah had called earlier this week to pretty much _demand_ that she go, as if she'd been expecting an argument from Lacy rather than her quick affirmation that she was coming.

Sounding somewhat defeated, she ordered, "And you're going to stay the whole weekend this time, too, no ducking out early with some lame excuse."

"Yes, Ma'am," Lacy agreed all too readily.

"You're just saying that to shut me up, aren't you?"

"Kinda, yeah, but I'm working so I'm really not paying much attention to your ranting and raving anyway."

Sarah sighed heavily. "All right. I'll leave you alone to work. But if you're not at Mum's when I get there, I'm going to hunt you down and drag you there."

"Yes, Dear," Lacy answered automatically in a whiney, nasal tone.

Sarah's answer was to disconnect the call.

Lacy was too involved in her writing to worry much about Sarah's potentially hurt feelings, frankly. About an hour later, she got another phone call, this time from Emma, who was coming home especially for the party and was also calling to make sure she was going to be there.

"Yep. I'll be there."

At least Emma didn't get all hot and bothered about it. She rang off pretty quickly once Lacy said she was working because she knew from previous experience that when Lacy was concentrating on her writing, there was very little room for anything else in her head.

As if those interruptions weren't enough, she got a text, too, the next day. Few people actually texted her, and those that did rated instant attention, so she eyed the text eagerly, but had no idea who it was from. The number came up as blocked.

 _Hi, Lacy! It's Tom._

Annoyed at being interrupted by someone who probably had a wrong number, she texted back quickly, an ego deflating:

Who?

There was a long pause before the next text but she was so involved in trying to get as much done as quickly as possible that so she hadn't really noticed how much time had gone by.

 _. . . Tom Hiddleston._

LOL! Sure it is! And I'm Angelina Jolie - nice to meetcha. You must have the  
wrong number, man.

When he read her reply, Tom sighed. This woman was going to completely destroy him without even trying, but he gave up gracefully and called her.

She answered the phone, sounding none to thrilled to be doing it. "Who _is_ this?"

"Are we going to go through this again? It's Tom, Lacy, you know, Emma's brother?" It had been a long time since he'd had to indentify himself that way - not that he minded at all. "It really was me texting you, you know. She gave me your number."

Lacy had no idea that Em had given him her phone number for emergencies. It certainly did sound like him, now that she pried herself away from her work long enough to recognize his voice. And once she realized that, she was mortified at what she'd said to him. "Oh, damn, Tom, I'm sorry! I'm writing and I'm don't think well when I'm writing - my mind's preoccupied and far away."

"Good thing I have a healthy ego," he said, clearing his throat.

"I'm so sorry, really I am. I get terminally absent minded when I'm concentrating like this." Lacy sat back in her chair. "What can I do you out of?"

"I was just calling to make sure that you knew about the party my Mum's throwing for me at her place and that you're going to come."

Lacy sighed. "You Hiddlestons need to coordinate with each other and pick one of you to badger me about whether or not I'm going to whatever social event it is you want me to attend. It would save all of us a lot of time. This is literally the fifth invitation I've received, some of which were much less of an invite and much more of a command."

Tom sighed. "Sarah?"

"Bingo. I _will_ be there. But _not_ if you all don't leave me alone and let me write. I have a deadline to meet, and if I don't meet it, that means I'll have to spend the weekend working rather than at your Mum's, where I'd much rather be."

He sounded dutifully chastised, although he was happy to know that she planned on attending. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure you knew I - we - wanted you to come and that you _are_ coming."

"As I said, as long as I get my work done."

"Good. Well, uh, good luck with it and I'm looking forward to seeing you there." It sounded lame even to his ears, but he couldn't think of anything particularly inspired to say.

"Bye, Tom."

It was a big family party, and Lacy didn't really know a lot of people there. She'd found herself back in that situation where she knew everyone thought she was going to spend the weekend, but she wasn't at all sure she was going to stay there the whole time, and the lonelier she felt in the crowd the less likely she was to stay.

On top of how awkward she already felt, tomorrow was her husband's birthday. She'd been so wrapped up in work and meeting that deadline that she'd lost track of the days and weeks. She doubted she was going to be able to keep herself together enough not to become verklempt all over the poor Hiddlestons, which would be an embarrassment from which she knew she'd never recover.

She tried to distract herself by watching Tom, but that, too, proved to be a mistake. Even though he was dressed pretty casually for him, and she was in the pretty, feminine pink dress she'd bought especially for this occasion, Lacy instantly felt as ugly as one of Cinderella's wicked stepsisters, surrounded by friends and family of theirs and women who were in their twenties and looked like they'd just stepped off a Paris runway. Rather than stand there behind the nearest potted plant to gawk at him, she went in search of a shot of courage - either that or something to drown her sorrows in - and she found it in the form of a bartender who gave her several shots of a much better brand of tequila than she was used to.

Tom was still there, somewhere, being inundated by birthday wishes and giving everyone who stood still long enough one of those amazing, full-on hugs of his. She knew this because she'd skirted carefully around the edges of that crowd, drowning in the sight of him in a pair of skin tight black leather pants, a white v-necked t-shirt and a lower v-necked black jumper, his hair and his Van Dyke beard now a gorgeous ginger color that suited him perfectly, and smiling broadly at everyone and everything, as always.

She thought she'd heard her name called and turned, becoming alarmingly dizzy just from that small movement. She realized with a start that she'd had much too much to drink and entirely too little to eat. She was feeling a bit light headed, too, so she stole a bready sandwich from the overladen food table in the dining room and headed outside into the night air of the back garden to try to clear her head.

It was a warmish starlit night; she'd already quickly shed both her shoes and her stockings, leaving them in an out of the way corner of the patio to walk onto the grass and wiggle her bare toes in it. She made short work of the sandwich which seemed to help some, then, as she hadn't had a dress on in a while she was feeling particularly girlish and giddy for the first time in a long time, she twirled around so that the flowy tulle skirt flared out around her and let herself get so dizzy that she fell down in a giggling heap, unable to get up at first and then finding herself quite contented to just lie back to look up at the stars.

She didn't expect to be joined, but before she knew it she had a companion, one who was soon on his back, too, gazing up at the stars with her and lying all together too close to her for her comfort, making every nerve in her body riot and causing her heart to thump wildly in her chest. She could literally smell him - all that leather and his cologne - and it was an intoxicating mix that didn't help her to calm her overanxious body in the least. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect.

They stayed there in a surprisingly companionable silence for a short time, then she said, "Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

She could hear the indulgent amusement in his voice - and absolutely no trace of judgment - when he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I saw you twirling, you know."

Lacy giggled, ending in an unladylike snort. "I was afraid of that. Of anyone who could have seen me, of course, it would _have_ to be you." He heard her sigh dramatically. "Ah well, into each life some soul-crushing embarrassment must fall."

He gave her an authentic, "Eh he he he." at that.

"And, in that case, I'm going to have to do a much better job of avoiding you from now on."

She knew he'd turned his head towards her even though she hadn't seen him do it. His voice was even more like molten velvet than it had been, pouring into an ear that was just that much closer.

He'd really thought she'd gotten over that. Weren't they friends when he'd left her flat that night? "Why would you avoid me?"

That got him another, louder snort she would never have issued if she wasn't still more than half in the bag, but then she'd never have started this conversational vein with him if she hadn't been, either. "No, question you should be asking is why _wouldn't_ I avoid you'?'"

"But why?" he seemed to genuinely care about her answer, sitting up when she did to rest his forearms on his bent knees, dangling a rocks glass of what she guessed contained Jameson from one hand.

As if it was plain as the cute nose on his face - which it was, sort of - Lacy mirrored his position, looking carefully around her to make sure all of her non-nylon covered parts were covered by the shortish skirt and said, "Because of who you are and who I'm not. You're . . . well, you - you're famous and rich and gorgeous and, if your advanced publicity - i.e., your sisters, your Mother and 99% of the female population of the internet - are to be believed, you're damned near perfect. I'm a nobody from nowhere who's pretty much done nothing with her life. To borrow a line from Molly Cooper on _Sherlock_ , 'I don't count'."

Not content to have to crane his neck to look at her where she was next to him, Tom moved himself so that he was still in the same position, still next to her, but was now sitting facing her. "And if I remember correctly, Sherlock looked horrified to realize that she thought that - both about herself and that she thought that was his opinion of her - and so am I about what you just said."

Kudos to him for having noticed the subtle interplay between Molly and Sherlock, Lacy thought to herself, since she shipped Sherlolly hard, but that didn't really change anything about how she felt. "Oh, please. Don't get your panties in a wad. I'm not denigrating myself in the least. I know what I've done with my life is private rather than public, and I value myself as much as the next person - but I'm not famous."

"I think I'm the only person here tonight who is," he pointed out. "I have lots of friends from all different walks of life. I'm no better or worse than anyone else."

"Neither am I."

"Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because from what my sisters have been telling me about you, you're uncomfortably close to a saint yourself."

Lacy rolled her eyes. "The only way I'm going to be canonized is with a real cannon, honey. A perfect woman wouldn't find herself two and a half sheets to the wind and have to grab a sandwich to sop up the alcohol and come out here to keep from fainting from the heat only to go twirling around barefoot in the grass." She scrunched her face up because of a sudden non sequitur that popped into her tequila soaked mind. "Wait, isn't that a Barbara Streisand movie?"

" _Barefoot in the Park_ ," he supplied.

"Yes, right. Sorry. When I'm drunk I go all _No Attention Span Theatre_."

He couldn't stop himself from grinning. "Did you really have too much too drink?"

"Yeah, on an empty stomach and I hate to feel out of control, especially in a crowd of people I don't know. It's a dangerous thing for any woman to do, regardless."

The smile left his face as if it had never been. "You're safe here."

"I'm as safe as I make myself, wherever I am," she corrected.

She laid back down then, straightening her legs quickly and crossing them demurely at the ankles, apparently not interested in discussing her safety or the lack thereof. Her hand shot up into the air seconds later. "Shooting star!"

He turned himself around again and flopped onto his back very near her. "I missed it."

"We - " She stopped abruptly and corrected herself no matter how it made her heart hurt. " _I_ have a party in August every year for the Perseid Meteor Shower. We all stay up all night - drinking and eating and playing poker. When we're sick of that, we have a fireworks show of our own, then we watch Mother Nature's fireworks. It's amazing. The first year we were together, my husband and I went up to the top of a nearby mountain and watched it by hanging out our car windows, him on his side . . . "

The tears had begun even before she'd noticed them, and he reached down and took her hand as he had in the car. Nothing more, no great grand gesture, just a hand to hold because she was sad.

Lacy dashed the tears away quickly, deeply embarrassed by them. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come, Tom. It's really not a good time of the year for me - not that any of them are any more, really." She slipped her hand out of his and stood abruptly, walking away, but Tom was very light on his feet and he caught up to her before she got more than a few steps away.

"Where are you going?"

"Home. I'm going to drive myself home - oh, fuck. I took the train." She stopped and looked up at him and he could clearly see the shiny tracks of tears on her cheeks, as well as the unshed ones in her eyes. "Would you drive me to the train station, please?"

He looked serious, as was his tone. "Even if there were trains still running - which there aren't - I wouldn't drive you there."

She looked affronted. "Why not?"

Tom ran his hand through his hair impatiently. "Because I - my Mum and my sisters would really like you to stay, I know, since you left kind of suddenly the last time you were here." He almost growled in frustration. "And because you're going to give me a complex if you run away from me again. Is this some kind of tease, or what?" He had never felt even the slightest bit of that "groupie" vibe he got from some of the women he came into contact with since he'd become famous. She didn't seem the type to suck up, but much more the type to tell him off, like his sisters would, which was fine by him. He liked her genuineness and sincerely regretted his words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

Lacy eyes grew wide; her lips tight. He could see that her teeth were clenched behind them and he knew he'd made a mistake letting his frustration get the better of him. Her tone was all that more lethal for the her soft voice. "Why yes, Tom, I've been avoiding you for the better part of a year so that, once I finally met you, I could spend the rest of my time running away from you, because, you know, you're Tom Fucking Hiddleston, after all, and how could I _possibly_ have the gall to resist you."

Jaw clenched at his own stupidity, he apologized, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that; I lost my head. I'm sorry."

She was standing there in front of him, arms crossed defensively over her chest as a direct result of what he'd said, eyes puffy and red from crying which tugged at his heart because he knew she'd wanted to leave so that she could grieve alone, with no one around to comfort her even in the smallest of ways.

What he did next was pure instinct, laced with a little Jameson's courage. He took a step towards her and engulfed her in his arms, one around her shoulders and the other just above the small of her back, holding her firmly but gently. He figured she'd either scream and run away from him again or she'd melt into him and accept what solace he could provide.

Leave it to Lacy to come up with a third option. She simply stood there, still as a fawn who thinks a predator might be watching, for the longest time. Tom didn't acknowledge how stiff she was in any way but simply continued to embrace her, resting his chin on the top of her head and, despite the circumstances, thoroughly enjoying the feel of her delicacy against him.

She was quiet for so long that he felt he had to check on her, leaning a bit away. When he moved, back, she did, too, and he could see that she'd been crying silently into his chest the whole time.

"I - I'm sorry - I'm getting you all wet." Lacy rubbed ineffectually at the damp spots on his jumper and t-shirt. "And over something stupid."

"Do you want to tell me what that is?" he asked softly. "And it's okay if you don't, too."

Lacy leaned her forehead against his chest and said quietly, "Tomorrow - tomorrow is - my husband's birthday."

Tom gathered her to him again, whispering, "You cry all you want, love, and I'll stand right here and hold you." One big hand rubbed soothingly between her shoulder blades.

She wished to high heaven that he wasn't being so damned nice to her. It was always worse - when she felt weepy - if someone noticed and was caring or supportive, and he was being both. But she couldn't seem to stop herself from weeping all over him for a few more minutes, her arms even creeping around him to hug him back as he sought to console her as best he could, stroking her hair and rubbing her back lazily. Eventually, she came to her senses and said, without moving a millimeter out of his arms, her words muffled by the fact that her face was buried in his sweater, "I'm taking you away from your party, Tom. You should go back in." She took a shuddering breath. "I'm fine."

"Definitely. I wholeheartedly agree with you. See? This is me, going back in right now," he said as he continued to rock them slowly back and forth, his arms still more than pleasantly tight around her.

She gave him a watery laugh. "Well, I should go in, then. I need to get a tissue and see if there's anything I can help your Mum with."

"Shhhh," he said, pressing the cocktail napkin from his drink into her hand. "This'll work for the first situation, and secondly, you're a guest at my party. You don't have to work."

Lacy looked up at him, teasing softly, "And here I was thinking I had attained 'extended family' status, since I've been down here annoying your Mother a zillion times and I leave my clothes and toiletries in my room here rather than carting them back and forth. Now I'm back at square one."

"Mum and the girls know you better than I do. I wonder why that is, hmmm? " He looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.

She swatted his shoulder with a chuckle. "Because you're downright terrifying, that's why." Lacy tried to pull away from him and found he wasn't going to let her go, especially not after what she'd just said.

He didn't like the sound of that at all. "Me? Terrifying? How so?"

"Oh, bother. It's not your problem, Tom, it's mine. And I'm mostly over it."

"Mostly?"

Of course he _would_ pick up on that modifier.

"Yeah, mostly - like, ninety-five percent, probably. I mean, you hugged me goodbye when you brought me home the last time, and I've been sobbing my heart out all over you for the past hour. Neither of those things would have happened if I wasn't pretty comfortable with you."

He gave her a mock stern look. "Well, I want you a hundred percent comfortable with me, Lacy."

She smiled shyly up at him. "That's pretty good, considering I really don't know you that well, you have to admit."

"We're definitely going to have to fix that, though


	4. Chapter 4

And he wasn't kidding. He kept her by his side for the rest of the night, keeping a casual arm draped around her waist and guiding her around the house greeting well wishers and introducing her to the rest of his family and friends. When she begged off any more revelry, he saw her up to the door to her room, kissing the hand he'd had a hold of all night and wishing her sweet dreams before bounding back downstairs.

The next morning, Diana put on a big breakfast, which Lacy was very proud and happy to have had a hand in, after which Tom corralled her and her over eager pup down to the beach for a walk. It was kind of misty and almost drizzly, so there really wasn't any one else there but them. He was dressed much more casually than last night in running shorts and a football jersey and he literally ran circles around her, at one point running backwards in front of her, the fart.

"Show off!" she laughed.

He had to admit that that was exactly what he was doing, but he didn't admit it to her. "Come for a run with me?" he asked, perfectly serious.

Lacy descended immediately into hysterics, as if he'd said something terminally funny. "Thomas, old bean, if you ever see me running, you'd better fucking well start running, too. because there's going to be someone pretty close behind me with a knife in his hand."

He conceded the point gracefully that she wasn't a runner. "Want me to run Peewee around a bit then?" Lacy nodded. The dog could always use more exercise than Lacy gave her. She and Tom were a good pair, both good natured creatures with boundless energy. He took off with the leash in his hand and Peewee was a bit hesitant to leave her mistress at first but when Tom called her excitedly a few times she finally trotted happily after him.

Lacy could see them running full tilt down the beach, both enjoying stretching their legs like that immensely. They met her on the way back and she turned around so that they were all headed back towards his car, but they took their time, looking for sea glass and interesting shells along the way as they talked companionably about all sorts of things, Tom touching her casually - holding her hand or tucking it into the crook of his elbow, pulling her against his side when he said he thought she looked cold.

Once they were back at his Mum's, he could sense a veil of sadness descending on her, so he did his best to keep her as occupied as possible - not that that was a hardship in the least. And he continued to stay very close to her, still taking every possible excuse to touch her.

They played Scrabble - all four of them - at the dining room table and he sat next to her, the hard length of his thigh touching her much softer and shorter one the entire time because of the way he splayed his legs when he sat. He won, although Lacy was close behind him in second place.

Mid-afternoon they popped popcorn and congregated in the family room to watch _Django Unchained_. She was seeing to the dog and got there late, after all the seats were taken. Lacy was going to just sit on the floor, but, noticing her dilemma, Tom got up and took her hand, seating her where he had been sitting, then moving the coffee table a bit so that he could sit on the floor in front of her.

"You don't mind, do you?" he asked, craning his head around so that he could look up at her and flashing her a drop dead gorgeous smile.

She wanted to scream, "Yes! My reproductive organs do _extremely_ mind your proximity to them!" but she managed to restrain herself and shook her head. Barely. Especially since when he leaned his head back to look at her for permission, the top of his head was practically pressed into the crotch of her jeans because she was forced to keep her legs pretty wide open by the alarming fact that he was sitting between them.

That just wasn't going to work for her. Her bits were in enough of an uproar when he was just in the same town - but letting any part of him - even one as innocuous as his hair - touch her intimately? While he was passively holding her legs open? She knew that was going to drive her insane and cause a huge wet stain on Diana's couch. So she carefully reclaimed her legs to sit tailor fashioned instead. His head was now pressed against her shins which acted as a lovely barrier - rather than her lady parts..

The others were chatting amongst themselves and Lacy was listening intently to them, that was until he craned his head up again and said sotto voce, "Chicken."

She reached down to pat his shoulder. "Absofuckinlutely, honey."

She didn't expect that he was going to claim her hand, but he did, encircling her wrist with his fingers and bringing her palm to his lips for a tender kiss with just the slightest flick of the very tip of his tongue against her vulnerable palm.

The man obviously had no idea what he was doing to her _at all_.

Either that or maybe he knew _exactly_ what he was doing. She wasn't really sure which possibility was worse any more or which was more likely to be true. It didn't really matter - her hand was still claimed by him and held against his shoulder, but, as far as her body was concerned, he might as well have turned around and pressed that kiss between her legs.

She tried to jerk her hand away when she'd felt his tongue against her, the spot immediately ultra-sensitized, but he wouldn't let go. He didn't pull on her or hurt her in any way, he simply refused to unlace his fingers from hers.

Lacy leaned forward, not wanting to cause any kind of an upset that might result in them becoming the target of everyone's attention. At the same time, she wanted her hand back.

"Tom!" she whispered near his ear.

His head automatically jerked back and she found her cheek right next to his, withdrawing slowly to a safer distance before she continued, "Give me my hand back, please."

Tom craned his head even further back and crooked his finger at her. Lacy bent down again and he didn't have any qualms at all about putting his lips practically on her ear to say huskily, "I like holding hands with you, so I'm of a mind to retain possession of your hand, but I might be convinced to return it to you if you agree to a forfeit."

Lacy spoke very slowly, choosing her words carefully and enunciating them precisely, each of them dripping with suspicion. "What _kind_ of forfeit?"

Tom had to laugh. "Nothing too risqué, I promise - a kiss. Let me see." He pretended to think hard, tapping his index finger on his lips while she rolled her eyes at him. "I've got it. You'll owe me a passionate kiss that I can demand from you at a time of my choosing - any time, any where."

"Me kissing you?"

He nodded.

"My lips on your lips?"

He he he he'd. "Did you study to be a barrister? Yes."

"I just want to clarify things. So a normal, average kiss."

He wasn't about to let her get away with that. "A passionate kiss, Lacy. One that will leave me wanting you." As if he didn't already, but that was a topic for another time.

"So you could ask me for this kiss five minutes from now or five years from now - and wherever we are, I'd have to really _kiss_ you?"

"You would."

She hesitated but a few seconds and said, "I agree."

Undeniably happy and amazed at her capitulation, he kissed the back of the hand he'd been holding hostage then let it go.

Then he reached up and grabbed her other hand in his with an evil laugh, switching allegiances conveniently.

Lacy couldn't help but laugh, blushing at his sincere attentions at the same time. "Thomas!" she giggled. "I knew you had to have a loophole somewhere, you snot."

They all enjoyed the movie, but, especially since he retained his hold on her hand, he could feel her flinch with every stroke when Hildy was being whipped, and he reached up to try to hold her other hand with his, too for this upsetting scene, but that wasn't possible because she had that hand over her eyes so that she couldn't actually see the whipping take place.

"It's not real, you know," he whispered, wanting to soothe her.

Since the scene was over, Lacy swatted his shoulder with her free hand. "I know that, dork!" but he could clearly see that she had been crying for Hildy behind her hand.

Tom met her eyes with a small smile of understanding and squeezed her hand as she swiped her other across her face, embarrassed at having been such a ninny in front of him, but when she'd finished wiping her face, he reached up and caught her other hand, bringing it down to rest on his shoulder, then placing her other hand there, too, whispering, "That feels good," even though she wasn't doing anything.

Since her hands were there, she began to massage him gently through his shirt. "Oh, damn that feels good!" he said out loud and everyone in the room looked at them. Tom had the foresight to reach up and encircle her wrists with his fingers so that - even though it was definitely her impulse - she couldn't retract her hands. "What? She's massaging my shoulders and it feels good."

Emma nodded. "She's done that for me, too. Lacy has freakishly strong hands." Lacy was glad that Emma didn't mention how they had gotten that way - that she had spent countless hours massaging her husband, trying to help him cope with the pain that he was in.

They were all enthralled by the movie, and the only other thing she did that he noticed during it was that when Django finally revealed himself to Hildy and Jamie Foxx drawled, "Hey, little troublemaker," in greeting, she cooed softly, as if she was Hildy and Django had been using that nickname in reference to her. It made him want her to coo like that at something _he'd_ said.

Her hands had remained on his shoulders after she'd stopped massaging him, and at one point he caught one of them again and began to rub the pad of his thumb over her sensitive palm, getting a shiver she couldn't suppress as his reward. Lacy tried without success to extract her hand from his again, but he refused to let go, not hurting her at all, just holding it until she stopped trying to take it away. But occasionally he repeated that somehow painfully intimate caress, eliciting a jerk of her hand from her or an unmistakable disruption of her breathing, which had him smiling to himself, quite satisfied with the results of his efforts.

When the movie ended, Emma had to go back to town and Sarah was having dinner with friends, and somehow Diana had gone too, for some vague reason and they were left to their own devices for dinner. Lacy wondered if this was a conspiracy to give them time together, but she was too busy deliberately elbowing Tom in the ribs - and saying in a patently false tone, "Excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me," every time - while they were both in the big kitchen, trying to get him the hell out of her way - or just annoy him, either way, she didn't much care which one - a she was making up a plate for herself from the leftovers.

He was too damned polite about it, though, and kept apologizing to her for being in her way until she giggled up at him. "Stop being so nice! I'm poking you in the ribs none too gently much more because it's fun than because you're in my way, Tom! You're supposed to poke back."

He raised his elbow at her in demonstration of their height difference. "If I do that to you, I'll cuff you in the ear."

She grinned evilly. "Ah, well, that's even better - I can annoy you with no concern about retribution of any kind -"

She should have kept her mouth shut. The next time she elbowed him sharply, she received a swat to her behind that was just as sharp.

"Hey - that's not fair!" she pouted, unable to resist the urge to rub her butt, which was stinging quite considerably. "I'm just poking you in the ribs a bit - you're a man, you can take it," she teased.

"And you're a woman and you can take a lot more than one swat - that's why you have such a lovely plump bottom." She turned so red at that that he thought she might faint on him, but he didn't let that deter him. "Besides, anything that gets you to behave yourself is fair as far as I'm concerned," he informed her smartly.

Lacy finished assembling her plate while keeping her elbows very carefully to herself as Tom smile indulgently down at her, quite satisfied at finding the solution to her brattiness so quickly and effectively, and one that he had enjoyed enormously, too.

Dinner that night was very informal since it was just the two of them - leftovers from the party, of which there were tons, eaten in front of the TV.

Tom made it back to the family room first, claiming a seat in the corner of the couch, his plate piled high with food. Lacy brought her much more meager plate in, as well as the drink that Tom had forgotten and her own, and attempted to claim the occasional chair nearby, but she heard him clear his throat loudly as she tried to sit down.

"Ahem."

Thinking he wanted his drink, she turned around and put it down on a coaster on the end table next to him.

"Oh, thank you, love. But that wasn't what I was ahemming about." He was giving her the eye, but she wasn't looking at him in her eagerness to be helpful.

"Something else I forgot?" she asked automatically, not sitting down in case he wanted her to go back into the kitchen for something.

"No, and you don't have to wait on me, really."

"I'm sorry," Lacy chuckled. "Force of habit, I guess." She made as if to sit in the chair until she heard him sound like he had a slow leak.

"Psssst." She looked over at him, still in the act of sitting down. He angled his head towards the cushion next to him on the couch. "I promise I'll only bite if you ask me to."

"Yes, but have you had all of your shots?" It took her less than a second to take a seat in the middle of the couch - not as close to him as he would have liked, but he'd work on that when they were through eating.

"What should we watch next?" he asked.

"I dunno. I'm for almost anything that's not horror. Horror is no longer horror, it's torture and I can't stand it. Do you have any preference?"

"Well, I can always go back to my old favorites - _Jurassic Park_ or _Kindergarten Cop_ \- "

"Either of those is fine with me. I haven't seen either of them in a very long time. How about _Jurassic Park_?" She knew that he did a reasonable imitation of a velociraptor, but she wasn't about to ask him to do it.

By the time his sisters and mother wandered back, within minutes of each other which only supported her conspiracy theory, she was leaning back against him on the couch with his arm around her. Wisely, however, not one comment was made about that - they were all too happy to see Tom with someone, especially Lacy.

When Tom ended up in the kitchen by himself with his mother, though, at once point that evening, and she pounced. "So? Something good must've happened between you two if we leave for the afternoon and when we come back she's in your arms, right?

Tom gave his mother a satisfied smile. "Someone taught me that a gentleman never kisses and tells. Regardless, I think this . . . whatever it's becoming - will be taken very slowly."

Diana nodded. "I think that's a very wise decision. She's still devastated by the loss of her husband and you can sometimes be a bit overwhelming without meaning to, Tom, and now there's your celebrity for her to consider, too."

"I know, Mum. Slow and steady."

"Exactly. She's a lovely woman, Tom, but she's still devastated. You'll have to give her time."

He hugged his mother tight. "Thanks for all the sage advice."

"I just want you to be happy. That's all."

As he backed out of the kitchen carrying two bowls of ice cream, his smile lit his face like she'd never seen before. "She already makes me very happy, Mum."

They indulged a bit while watching movies, Tom in Jameson, his sisters and Mum in wine and he even convinced Lacy to have a few shots of tequila that loosened her up but also made her sleepy.

When he and his sisters were watching something she had no interest in, she actually fell asleep in Tom's arms. He counted that as a good thing - a very good thing - knowing she would have had to have felt both very safe with him and also very trusting of him to have done so The weight of her resting against him felt marvelous, and he wished he could hold her all night long like that.

But Peewee began to demand to go out an hour later or so, and Tom attempted - from his position beneath her - to both keep the dog quiet so that she wouldn't wake her mistress and organize someone to take her out for Lacy. But it turned out that no one knew where Lacy kept the dog's leash, so he bent down and kissed the top of her head very softly, endeavoring to wake her up as gently as possible, keeping his arms tight around her as he whispered, "Lacy, love, where's the dog's leash?"

She stirred only a little, immediately curling up into an even smaller ball, holding the length of his arm against her front, wrapping it up in her arms as if it was a pillow she was clutching to her. Tom nearly fainted at where his arm ended up - squished between her breasts - as well as where his hand landed, which was a hair's breadth from the juncture of her thighs - very carefully and consciously suppressing the urge to extend his fingers to test the warmth he knew would be there. Wetness, too? he dared to wonder.

"What?" came the soft and sleepy query.

"Peewee needs to go out," he repeated quietly. "Where do you keep her leash?"

At that Lacy tried to sit up, but Tom wouldn't give her the room necessary to do it, kind of caging her with his body. "You don't have to wake up, honey. Emma's gonna take her out. We just need to know where you're putting the leash."

He didn't think he'd ever felt so happy at such a small thing, but after a few seconds of continued stiffness, she settled back down without ever having opened her eyes. "The Deacon's bench by the back door, under my purse," she murmured. He translated to Em and she was on her way.

As much as he didn't want to disturb her, he decided to ask, "Lacy, do you want to go up to bed?"

There was a long pause and then, "Time is it?"

"Almost midnight."

"Yes, please," she answered. "Just a sec and I'll get off you."

But he didn't give her that time. Instead, he gathered her to him and rose off the couch with her in his arms.

"Thomas?" came her small voice from where her mouth was buried against his shoulder.

"Lacy?" he answered in a bare whisper.

"What are you doing?" she asked although she knew what he was doing - he was walking up a flight of stairs with her in his arms as if he was carrying a feather instead of all of _her_ weight. And he was talking to her at the same time.

He couldn't suppress the indulgent smile that slowly spilled across his lips. "I'm going to put you bed."

"Oh."

Tom was amazed - and glad - that she didn't put up any more of a fuss, but he didn't count his chickens. The door to her room was open, and once he brought her through it he left it that way, knowing that Emma would be up with the dog any minute now. He'd already considered the idea of undressing her but rejected it, figuring that, in the morning, she wouldn't have liked that idea much.

Instead he reached down to tug back the covers and deposited her with infinite care onto the bed, pulling them back up over her as soon as he had her shoes and socks off.

Emma appeared then, holding the dog who she tucked into the crate that lived in the corner of what his family had come think of as Lacy's room.

"I didn't undress her . . ." Tom said, looking at Emma for reassurance.

"I should think not."

He followed Em out the door, but she stopped just as they were crossing the threshold. "Did you take off her socks?"

"Yes, along with her shoes, why?"

"Because she likes to sleep with her socks on. Her feet get cold."

Tom volunteered immediately, turning around saying, "I'll put them back on."

"I rather thought you would. Don't be too long. You know what a sensitive ear Mum has . . ."

What, did she think he was going to try to make love to her while she was asleep, the brat? When they came together for the first time she was damned well not going to be asleep through it, Tom thought.

Instead of pulling all of the covers off her, he reached under them and brought each one of her feet out individually, pulling her socks back on and noticing at the same time - and for the first time - that her tiny toenails were painted a feminine frosted pink that matched the dress she'd been wearing the night of his party, and that she had a pretty, thin, filigreed gold ring on each second toe.

He liked both of those touches on her immensely, and it made him bold enough to kiss the top of her each foot as he tucked it back under the covers. Then he stood at the head of the bed and leaned down to kiss her cheek.

"Good night, Lacy, my love."

He half expected her to prove she'd been awake through the whole thing by answering him back, but she didn't.

The next morning, Lacy awakened slowly - for the first time in several years, since she'd gotten the puppy. She rolled over and realized that she was still fully dressed, except for her shoes, which were neatly placed by the door - where she would never have thought of putting them.

She'd only had a couple of shots last night - she couldn't possibly have gotten so drunk from just that that she'd had to have one of the Hiddlestons put her to bed, had she? she wondered with real alarm. And if she had, what really got her wondering was exactly which Hiddleston had done it?

And then she looked at Peewee's crate and realized it was empty - that was _not_ a good thing.

She grabbed the first clean clothes she could come up with - not paying attention to whether or not they matched - and ran downstairs just in time to see Tom and his Mum saying goodbye to his sisters, who quickly embraced her as they were out the door. Peewee was all over her - and not trying to get out the door, so she felt relieved about that. At least she hadn't completely abandoned her dog last night.

Diana left almost immediately after the girls, citing a meeting at church. She wasn't sure who would be home when she got back, so she said her goodbyes to the two of them right then and there, hugging Lacy like a daughter and telling her how much she'd enjoyed having her - to which Lacy responded with how much she loved coming down there and being a part of a family again.

"Well, love, as far as I'm concerned, you can change your name to Hiddleston any time now."

Lacy's face blazed what she knew was an unbecoming shade of neon red as Diana turned her attention to her son, who wasn't much happier with her than Lacy was with that little comment, but he enfolded his Mum in a loving hug, regardless, during which she whispered to him, "Go get her, Tiger!" which had him blushing even more than he already was.

She was gone, and they were alone and Lacy was feeling awkward again. "I don't remember much about last night. How did I get to bed, dare I ask?"

"You fell asleep on me and I carried you upstairs and took off your shoes and tucked you in," he answered matter-of-factly, as if it was something he did every day. "This morning I wanted you to sleep, so I had Emma go into your room and get take the dog out at seven or so -"

Lacy responded ruefully, "She must've loved you getting her up to do that."

"She was already up and getting ready to leave."

"Oh."

Tom took a step towards her, tugging her into his arms whether she wanted to be there or not. She seemed a bit uptight this morning and he wanted to dispel that, hoping his nearness - which should have been much more familiar to her now - would calm her nerves. "Are you hungry?"

She shook her head.

"Well, then, I think you're going to have a bit of a change of plans."

"I am?" she looked up at him and it was all he could do to keep himself from leaning down to kiss her, but he didn't think she'd welcome it. He couldn't quite read her mood yet. He knew she had no doubt as to his, since, as usual, the blatant proof of his interest was pressing insistently into her stomach, but she didn't even seem to notice it and he wasn't sure whether or not that was a bad thing.

"Yeah, Mum's going to be gone until late afternoon, and I've got to head back to town, so I'm figuring you can come back with me." He very carefully _didn't_ make it a question. He wanted her to think it was a _fait accompli_. "I'll drop you off at your apartment like we did last time."

With almost no hesitation at all - which made him feel like cheering - she said, "That sounds reasonable." Her tone was entirely unenthusiastic, but at least she wasn't running away from him. He supposed that was something.

They were on the road relatively quickly, and their trip this time wasn't much different from the last - although it was, perhaps, a bit more raucous since they knew each other better.

"So what's on your agenda for this week?" he asked as he skillfully merged them onto the motorway. When they were safely in the fast lane, he reached across to grab her hand, lacing their fingers together then holding them at the top of his thigh and causing Lacy's pulse to skyrocket.

How could he expect her to answer him when he did things like that just before she was supposed to? "I have a bit of editing left to do on what I finished up before I came down here, but other than that, not much. I usually spend the day at one museum or another - my favorite being the Victoria and Albert."

He nodded.

"What about you? Lord knows you have way more of a life than I would ever aspire to. I get tired just thinking about all the stuff you're doing."

He "ehe he he he'd" at that, saying, "Well, at the end of not this week but next week I'm going to California for a couple of weeks."

"What for?"

"Some press stuff and I'm going to voice a character or two on _Family Guy_ and _Robot Chicken_."

"Oh, cool - I love both of those shows."

He gave her a raised eyebrow look. "You do?"

She looks a bit insulted. "I'll have you know that I have a very broad sense of humor. I really only dislike hurtful humor and slapstick. And I know this is blasphemy to say to someone who's British and a man, but I hate hate hate both _Monty Python_ and _Fawlty Towers_."

"That's it. Expect to see your deportation papers in the post shortly," he deadpanned.

Laughing, she asked, "Can I plead for leniency if I say that I saw John Cleese's _Alimony Tour_ and thought it was a riot?"

He turned to her with an all too serious expression on his face and rasped before he could think not to, "I would love to hear you beg for leniency . . ."

It was the first time since they'd gotten in the car that her face flamed bright red - that had to be some kind of a record for her. "I never, ever beg," she said primly refusing to meet those compelling eyes of his and instead staring determinedly out the window.

The husky timbre of his voice felt as if he was dragging a slightly callused fingertip over her clit as his hand tightened on hers when she tried to extricate it from his, turning back towards him to try to find a way to accomplish the task. "Is that a challenge?"

"Hell, no. It most definitely is not, because the context in which I was thinking of it was not the bedroom but rather Loki commanding those people in Germany to kneel. I would have been the next person dead after that old man because I would _never_ kneel to him."

Of course he picked up on what she didn't want him to. "So, you _do_ beg? But only in the bedroom?"

She swatted his shoulder with her free hand. "I am _so_ not having this conversation with you, Thomas."

He pouted, his lower lip practically hitting the floor. "Well, I suppose I'll let you off the hook, but I'm going to put a bookmark in this conversation, love, because I _do_ intend have this it with you eventually, and to have an answer from you, one way or the other."

Lacy did her best to ignore him, despite the fact that her body was practically aflame at his words. "One way or the other"? What did he mean by that? Verbally or physically, she wondered, then reigned herself in as much as she could. She continued to fiddle with her phone even though there was nothing interesting for her to look at on it but all she required was a way in which she wouldn't have to look at him.

He deliberately introduced a less volatile subject and their conversation meandered for a while, until he asked her if she'd seen any movies he'd been in.

"Well, when I first met Em and she mentioned that her brother Tom was an actor, I honestly didn't think much about it. I didn't think you were a _famous_ actor until a week or so later when I looked you up on the internet and was confronted by quite a few pictures of parts of you I would really rather not have pointed out to me." Unless I have a bottle of lube handy and a lot of spare time, that is, she added internally.

He looked horrified and thoroughly embarrassed.

"When I looked down through your IMDB listing, I saw both of the Thor movies, which I had seen, as well as _The Avengers_ movie. I'd seen all of them - with my husband, who was a cinephile when I met him and who infected me with it."

He nodded, but didn't say anything.

"However, when I saw _The Avengers_ in particular - but the Thors, too, I'm sorry to have to confess - I wasn't looking at you."

His brows drew together. "You weren't?"

Lacy shook her head solemnly. "I was not. In the Thor movies I was looking at Chris Hemsworth and rooting for him to get much further together with Natalie Portman than he did, unfortunately, and in _The Avengers_ , I was looking at Mark Ruffalo - I think he's very handsome and I like his demeanor as Banner. Next I was looking at Tony Stark, then Chris Evans, then Thor. Loki didn't really register with me very much. Sorry."

Tom had to laugh that. The woman he was interested had seen the biggest movies he'd been in to date and didn't much remember him in them. That was just about right. She was smacking his ego down right and left, but he was perfectly okay with that. It felt real, and he liked real.

"Don't be sorry, Lacy. I always want you to be truthful with me. Even if you do crush my fragile ego every time I see you."

"Always glad to help, Tom," she grinned.

When they arrived at her place, he was his usual gentlemanly self, escorting her and the dog upstairs and carrying her luggage for her - not that she'd brought much, but he hadn't allowed her to even retrieve her small valise from the trunk. All she had to do was keep track of her purse and the dog, which was no problem.

He had commandeered her keys downstairs and used them to open her door, put her case down inside and take a short look around before he let her in. Lacy set the dog loose in the flat and she went immediately for the bedroom, leaving them alone.

She turned to him, feeling a jittery kind of nervousness that was much different from before she had met him. It was there because she knew that he liked and wanted her; it was that nervous wariness that all prey have. She was a woman who was being pursued by a very potent, persistent man who was confident enough to believe that he _would_ end up with her, no matter how many roadblocks she threw up. "Thank you so much for driving me all this way, Tom. I appreciate it."

He captured her hands and brought the backs of both of them to his lips. "I enjoyed it enormously - I like talking to you. You make me smile."

Feeling a bit shy around him, she gave him a tentative smile, her eyes darting to his then away quickly at the blatant desire she saw reflected there.

He began to draw her inexorably towards him, since her hands were still in his, until her body bumped up against his, her small feet stationed intimately between enormous ones. The hands that had held hers released them to lace together at the small of her back, forcing her lower body even more closely against his.

And there he was again; she was beginning to expect that insistent presence against her tummy whenever they stood like this together. She supposed it was a compliment, and she decided she was going to take it that way.

His index finger found its way to her jaw, tilting it upwards so that she had to look into his eyes when she had studiously been trying to avoid doing just that. "Do you remember what you owe me, Lacy?"

Her eyes went wide with surprise. "Yes, I do."

"I think I'm in a mood to collect it."

"Now?" she gulped painfully, her mouth suddenly dry as a bone and filled with cotton.

He nodded. "Right now."

The words he'd used about what he expected when she paid her forfeit drifted through her brain, even in his voice, too, " A passionate kiss, Lacy. One that will leave me wanting you."

She had, as usual, kicked off her shoes as soon as she'd gotten in the door - not that they were heels, though, anyway, but as she looked up at him she realized that whenever - if ever again after this - they kissed, she would be at a distinct disadvantage, realizing for the first time that she'd never really kissed a man who was taller than she was except for a casual peck on the cheek.

But she figured she'd do what she could, standing on tiptoes and twining her arms around his neck. He bent down to meet her and she melted their lips together very gently at first, undemandingly, tasting him a bit, teasing a little and flicking the tip of her tongue over his bottom lip until he sucked in his breath at the sensation. She took blatant advantage of his surprise. Her mouth slanted across his, feeling the tickle of his beard against her soft skin, that bold tongue finding its way past her teeth and his to explore his mouth, jousting with his, squealing a bit right into his mouth as she felt him wrap his arms around her ribcage and lift her completely off her feet, which plastered her body along his from breasts to hips.

Lost in the passions she had fanned within the two of them, Lacy's fingers came up to delve into the thatch of red curls at the back of his head, reveling in their softness and the way they clung to the very fingers that were invading them. Much like the moistest, most delicate part of her body would cling to him, too, if he took her.

He was the one who broke the kiss off; she was far too gone to even begin to reign herself in. Thankfully he wasn't - although his body proved that theory wrong quite insistently.

Tom craned his head away from her, his eyes closed for a long moment and she could see he was wrestling with himself. "I think I'd better put you down now," he rumbled, his voice sounding more blatantly raw than she'd ever heard it before. "Another few minutes of that and the only place I'm going to put you down is on your bed."

Lacy could hardly believe it herself, but she couldn't argue with him, either, although it didn't change what she did next, tucking her forehead against his neck while he held her securely to him, one broad palm cupping her cheek.

Long moments later, he brought her to an easy landing on the floor, but still kept her close. She was looking down at her feet and he realized he needed some reassurance that he hadn't been the only one to be affected by that kiss, so he tipped her chin up again to search eyes that were very definitely passion clouded, which made him want to claim her lips again in a kiss of his own behest.

But he figured he shouldn't. He hadn't been kidding about the idea that their next kiss would land them in her bed - not at all.

Her voice was just as hoarse as his had been, he was glad to hear. "Is the forfeit paid, Thomas?" she asked formally.

"And then some, love. And then some."

They just stood their like dolts for a long moment, gazing into each other's eyes, then Tom - who seemed to be the only one between them with any modicum of sense left - finally said, "I guess I'd better be going."

Almost wistfully, she agreed, "Yes, I guess so. Thank you again for bringing me home," as he bestowed a chaste kiss to the top of her head.

"You're always welcome, Lacy. Close and lock the door behind me," he cautioned, and she felt her heart contract with emotion at how protective he was being of her.

Her quick, "Yes, Sir," slipped out of her mouth so easily that she didn't really hear it herself.

But Tom did, allowing himself - after he heard her door close behind him as well as the sounds of her locks being engaged - a small smile and a soft "Whoop!" of triumph as he made his way to the elevator.

It had to be love, otherwise he didn't think he'd be celebrating the fact that he was going home tonight alone.

Again.


	5. Chapter 5

Lacy had wondered if she'd get to see him before he left for the States, but it ended up that she saw him twice, and the second time _he_ was the one who saw _her_ \- much too much of her, in fact.

The first time, he kind of just appeared in the hallway when she looked up from the dinner she was constructing and yelped in fright.

Her hand over a heart that was trying to make its way out of her chest, Lacy yelled, "Christ on a cracker, Tom, da fuq?"

His palms pressed together as if in prayer, he began to apologize profusely as he bowed to her. "Sorry, sorry. So sorry. I should have announced myself. I didn't mean to scare you, really. I'm sorry." He looked positively mortified, coming towards her to enfold her in a type of hug she was rapidly beginning to associate with him - warm, loving and genuine.

And inescapable, until he deigned to let her go, which he did with severe reluctance, not liking the way she immediately danced several feet away from him.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for my sister, actually, although I can't say as I'm disappointed to find you instead." Lacy seemed not as comfortable as he would have liked, considering the kiss they had shared on her doorstep less than a week ago. She had that almost wary look back in her eyes that he'd hoped had been banished permanently.

"She's not here. She's got a rehearsal tonight." Then she mused aloud, "And didn't I lock that door?"

"Damn, that's right." In answer to her question, Tom showed her that he had a set of keys to the place that she hadn't known that his sister gave him. Lacy wasn't really sure how she felt about the fact that he had a key to her apartment, but she figured she'd dwell on that later.

"Well, if you're at odds and ends, I just made my version of stir fry and you're welcome to stay and have dinner with me." She couldn't believe what she'd just asked him. Who was she kidding? He wasn't going to stay; the man had a busy damned life. But, what the heck. He didn't respond immediately so she felt it was necessary to fill the silence with her stupid gibberish. "I assure you that every ingredient is completely organic and free range - the chicken, the onions, the celery -"

He was already laughing. "Free range celery? And onions?"

Lacy nodded solemnly. "Yep - don't forget the free range peppers, garlic, ginger and soy sauce, too. I'll warn you, though," she continued in a completely serious voice, "if you decide to stay, you have to agree to keep me safe, as in I'm going to sacrifice you in a heartbeat to save my own ass. So if you can live with that you should definitely stay."

His brows knit together as he leaned on the counter. "Save you? From what?"

"Zombies. I'm going to watch the latest episode of _Walking Dead_ \- can't you tell? All of the lights in the house are on."

He smiled broadly, looking around to see that she wasn't kidding - thinking it was cute that she got scared - and this time making a sweeping, courtly bow in front of her, "I would be honored to be your defender and/or zombie fodder, whichever comes first."

She pulled out the edge of her ratty t-shirt that she was mortified to realize said, "A Hard Man is Good to Find" and curtsied prettily. "Thank you, kind Sir. Just let me finish this up and we'll eat."

As she worked, she noticed from the start that he took up an enormous amount of room in her tiny kitchen and she was still a bit nervous around him but for a different reason than she had been. Now she was nervous because he was a man, not because he was Tom Hiddleston - worse than that, he was a man that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt _wanted_ her.

She tripped over him multiple times and finally she'd just reached the end of her rope. Lacy walked over to where he was leaning a hip against the counter with his arms folded over his chest, looking all gorgeously GQ in a blue suit that fit him like a second skin, putting her hands on his biceps to move him bodily to where she wanted him to be.

But she couldn't budge him, not even an inch. It was highly depressing.

Sighing exasperatedly up at him, she groused, "Work with me here, Hiddleston. We're trying to get you out of my way before I trip over those impossibly long legs of yours and kill myself. If nothing else, consider the adverse publicity therein. I know you can dance - the Internet says so and it _never_ lies - surely you can manage four or five steps to your right and back in the interest of us eating dinner sometime soon?"

He grinned broadly and chuckled and the next time she tried to move him, he cooperated.

When she got him where she wanted him, she made a horizontal motion with one fuzzy pink slipper-sock covered foot in front of the ends of his improbably large, shiny shoes. "There's an imaginary line right here." Lacy looked up at him, her expression as dominant as she could make it. "Don't cross it. Sit. Stay. Good boy."

That got him "Ehe he he"ing at her.

With him far enough away - not really, but it was a lot easier to put him out of her mind now than it was before - even though she could feel his eyes on her every movement - she was able to assess what still needed to be done and made quick work of it.

He, of course, had moved in the mean time. He was still out of her way but managed to get much closer, too, somehow.

Disconcertingly so.

When she glared at him, he smiled cheekily. "I like watching at you and I didn't have a very good vantage point from over there. I'll stay out of your way."

Lacy gave him a long suffering sigh. With his looks and charm she knew he expected to be forgiven almost any transgression.

And, damn it, he was right.

"I give up. You're untrainable." Luckily she was just about done. She dished up their dinner and brought it into the living room with him trailing after her.

She sat in her favorite chair and he landed deliberately on the end of the loveseat that was closest to her, on her right. When they extended their arms their hands were almost touching. She didn't seem to notice but he most assuredly did, but then she seemed very absorbed in the show, so much so that when she was startled by something in the episode she literally jumped, curling herself into her chair in a ball, as if she wanted to be small enough that the lumbering, burned zombies would overlook her.

He used that as an excuse to take her hand. "Do you want to come over here where I can protect you better?" he offered, realizing that he was just pretending he was doing so out of altruistic tendencies.

She didn't really answer him - her eyes stayed on the tube - but she did come to sit on the floor in front of the love seat which _was_ closer, he supposed, almost touching his leg.

He didn't know why he reacted to her like this, but she might as well have stripped her clothes off and straddled him. He was hard as a rock and she'd really only ever touched him in the most innocent of ways and barely that, too.

When the episode was over and she got up to get him some dessert as a surprise, he followed her into the kitchen.

"Cheesecake?"

Tom groaned and patted his nonexistent belly. "Yes, please, but a small piece."

She rolled her eyes at him.

"What?"

"The Sexiest Man Alive doesn't want to ruin his girlish figure, I guess," she teased, grinning.

He laughed and blushed charmingly. Everything the man did was disgustingly charming. Yet Lacy still felt so incredibly inadequate around Tom sometimes that it was almost a physical pain.

She noticed that he was watching her like a tiger watches an injured gazelle and the room seemed to get several sizes smaller immediately. It was easier to be around him when she hadn't noticed the way he was looking at her.

She had to reach up to the top shelf to get the dessert plates and he came to  
her rescue without having been asked.

"Damn, I forget that the other reason I keep you around is how friggin' tall you are."  
All of a sudden she realized that he was standing directly behind her - so close she could feel the heat of him brushing her back. "And you're way too damned close for comfort," she said under her breath, but he was more than close enough to her that he heard that aside.

Lacy glided away to get forks but he followed close behind and came around beside her to stay her hands merely by putting his over them.

"I'm curious, Lacy. What's the first reason you keep me around?" he asked softly.

He was touching her, and even though it was extremely chaste, that was much too much stimulation for her brain to work properly. All she could think about was how fast her pulse was racing and whether or not she thought she could stave off a faint. "The first what?"

She knew it was a mistake but she looked up at him, and it was all over. She was happily lost in those eyes.

Warm strong arms wrapped around her and, suddenly, before she could begin to process what was happening, he was kissing her. And to her complete mortification she couldn't keep herself from groaning so loudly when their lips met that it echoed in the small kitchen.

But somehow she managed to marshal her defenses and step away. He let her go, but with obvious reluctance, and she almost wished he hadn't, too. It was damned hard to do, but Lacy made herself take enough steps away from him so as to be out of his reach, despite the fact that she knew that that was a false sense of security.

"I'm sorry, but this isn't gonna work."

He leaned his hip against the counter again, eying her intently. "Why not?"

"Because you're standing there in Armani and I'm in ten year old Walmart's best, for one thing."

He brushed that concern aside as irrelevant and zeroed in on what he really wanted to know. "You never did answer my question."

"What question?" She genuinely didn't remember.

"About what the other reason for keeping me around is?"

Lacy turned around and tried to head for the silverware drawer again. "Ah. And I'm not _going_ to answer that question - no wonder I didn't remember it."

Seconds later she was back in his arms, and they were much tighter around her than they were before. "I guess I'll just have to kiss you until you change your mind."

That was definitely a whimper he heard, and he felt as if he'd just conquered the planet like Loki couldn't.

Her lips were wonderfully soft and despite whatever reservations she still had she kissed him back from the first, which had been a delightful surprise he wasn't expecting. When her hands crept up around his neck, though, she began to think better of it, sinking back down off of tiptoes. "Okay, okay, I'll tell you. You sure do know how to torture a girl, Hiddleston." She gave him a sidelong grin.

He let her go and she skittered to the other side of the kitchen. She took a revealing moment to calm her breathing before she took a deep breath and spoke, raising her head to meet his eyes as she did so.

"Surely you must realize that the primary reason I keep you around is the pure unadulterated eye candy, Shirley?"

He blushed beautifully. "Ah, thank you."

"No, the correct response is 'don't call me Shirley'."

That got him laughing. "Are you still nervous of me?"

"No, not generally. That ship has sailed, and you're soon going to wish it hadn't, believe me."

"Oh, I don't think so," he said, much too quietly and seriously for her comfort. "What did you mean about not generally?" He moved to trap her in the corner she's gotten herself into, but in a very non threatening manner, moving slowly but deliberately, giving her time to balk if she was going to.

He watched her swallow hard and he has his answer in her eyes. She looked vaguely like a rabbit caught in a trap so he stopped advancing on her, even though his body really didn't want him to.

Trying to answer him, she stuttered, "I - In the normal course of events, I'm not nervous around you at all any more, but this . . . this is different."

"Bad different or good different?" he asked, taking a small step forward.

If he admitted it to himself, he was hoping for an enthusiastic "good different" but didn't really get it.

"I don't mean to be such a ninny, Tom. I really don't. I'm just kind of surprised at your interest, frankly - very flattered, but surprised, so it plays hell with my nerves, too."

Another small step and they were almost in contact with each other again. He was close enough to her to smell what was becoming the familiar scent of her perfume and feel the heat radiating off of her. "Is there anything I can do to make you feel less stressed?"

She smiled weakly up at him. "No, just . . . be your usual, lovely self. It's my . . . neuroses to deal with, not yours."

He slipped his arms around her waist and slowly pulled her against him. "No, if it affects you it affects me, so it's ours to deal with."

"You're depressingly kind and understanding. You've really gotta stop that shit."

He growled at that. "No, I'm _really_ not. I would make love to you right now, standing up, if you would agree you wanted me to."

He sounded entirely too hopeful, and she had to dash those hopes but she also had to be true to herself. She didn't know what to say, so she just kept her head down.

It nearly killed him to do it, but he took a step back and let his hands fall to his sides almost dejectedly.

"It's not that I don't want you, Tom, believe me. I do, despite my misgivings. I just have to ask you to take this slowly - glacially, I'm afraid. And I would certainly understand if you don't want to wait that long - you're young and gorgeous and you could have any woman you wanted -"

"The woman I want is standing right in front of me," he interrupted huskily. "And she's more than worth waiting any amount of time for, until she feels it's right for her."

Lacy hadn't realized that her mouth was parted, but when she did she shut it with a click and swallowed painfully, taking his big hand in hers and pressing her lips to the back of it as he had done so many times with her. Then she retained possession of it, using it to lead him back into the living room, where she joined him on the loveseat and they ate cheesecake and indulged in her favorite TV programs until he had to leave.

The week after that, he dropped by the flat unexpectedly only a few days before he left and caught her coming out of the shower naked. To his credit he turned around - after a an almost imperceptible beat during which his eyes took in every last inch of her - immediately and apologized profusely, sounding absolutely horrified. He figured she was going to be livid about what he'd in all truth accidentally seen, and rightly so.

Lacy somehow decided not to panic in the moment, sighing and maing her way to her room, where she dressed completely - no pajamas even though it was evening. When she came back out to him, he was amazed - and relieved - when she walked right up to him and hugged him tight. He was slower to embrace her than he might have been usually because he was so stunned that she was doing that at all instead of lighting into him, but when she stepped away she told him to forget it ever happened - that she was fine as long as they never talked about it.

"It _was_ a mistake, right?" she affirmed, looking up into his eyes.

"Of course."

"Okay, then, we're fine. However I'd prefer it from now on if you'd knock and let me let you in rather than just using your keys."

Still mortified, Tom nodded. He would have agreed to pretty much anything if it kept her happy after his horrible faux pas. "Yes, definitely. I'm so sorry."

Lacy nodded. "Em's not here, by the way."

He had come by to see his sister before he left, but he had to admit that he looked forward to it even more now that he could almost always also see Lacy, too.

"Damn. That's right - I've not got very good timing, do I?"

"No, you don't." Wanting to needle him a bit, Lacy teased with a grin, "You know, Tom, there is such a thing as a telephone, whereby you could call me and find out immediately whether or not your sister's home. Or you could cut out the middle man entirely and call her. You know, if you're really advanced, you could, you know, text me _or_ her. Save yourself the trip?"

An almost evil smile spread across his face. "Yes, but then I'd deprive myself of the distinct pleasure of seeing you."

Lacy tried to be gruff with him but it came out more rueful since she couldn't stop herself from smiling or blushing, as usual around him. "You are incorrigible."

He tried to keep the longing out of his expression while he looked at her, but he wasn't sure he was managing it, so he said kind of forlornly, "Well, I guess I'll go then."

Lacy stopped herself from asking him if he wanted to wait for Emma, but there was really no telling when she'd come home - or if - and she was quite sure Tom had other more important things to do with his time than to stay and talk with her. "I'll tell Emma you stopped by. She'll be very sorry to have missed you," she said as she trailed him to the door, trying not to look at his butt as she did so. Her eyes landed on his feet, which were encased in what looked like very expensive leather dress shoes, and that wasn't any better because he had big feet, and she knew exactly what that was supposed to mean according to the old wives' tale. Then she remembered that he had large hands, too, which was supposed to be another portent of a man's endowment. With that many signs he must've been of gigantic proportions . . .

He turned around at the door and she was close - too close - behind him. Startled, she looked up into his eyes, wishing she hadn't when he rasped, as if into her ear, "You took my breath away, Lacy. You looked like Venus coming out of the half shell, all warm and wet."

Her breathing stopped for a long moment and she felt as if he was touching her intimately while she lost herself in those gorgeous gaze, seeing her own desire reflected back at her in spades. But then she came to her senses, saying, "You are such a liar. Send me the psychiatrist's bill. You're going to be scarred for life."

Tom grabbed her hand and put it on top of his obvious arousal. "No," he growled, "I'm going to be _hard_ for life."

Lacy gulped. Gigantic, indeed.

He was pleasantly surprised when she popped up on her tip toes and kissed his cheek, then took a small step away. "Well, it's a compliment to you that I didn't just bolt for my room. I trust you to be a gentleman. I felt embarrassed but not . . . threatened. You're probably the only man in my life to whom I would react that way, and I don't even know you that well."

He swallowed hard. "Thank you." One long finger followed her jaw line as he tipped her head up so that she had to look at him. "But don't make the mistake of thinking I don't want you desperately just because I treat you the way you deserve to be treated."

She reached up and pulled him down by the lapels as she tiptoed again so that her lips were against his. "You've already shown me all the evidence I need of that." Her hand glided slowly down his front to cup him again and he groaned when it fit tightly over him, easily overflowing it.

He couldn't help himself. His arms found their way around her, lifting her off her feet and trapping her against him, although he knew he was just torturing himself, that he couldn't press her for more than this, especially not when he was about to go away. Tom held her there for long moments, kissing the breath out of both of them, then lowered Lacy to her feet, all the while barely able to resist the urge to take much, much more from her.

He kissed the top of her head, instead, rumbling, "Be good while I'm gone."

Lacy took hold of his hand, looking up at him with a not so innocent smile. "Me? I'm always an complete and utter angel, whether or not you're here."

This time he snorted and she felt better about all of the snorting she'd been doing all over him. "Why is it that I don't quite believe you?" he asked, a broad smile on his face.

"Why, Mr. Hiddleston, I'm sure I wouldn't have any idea whatsoever. I am as innocent as they day is long, I'll have you know."

His smile disappeared to be replaced by something less tangible but much more intense. "Sometimes you could make me believe that, Lacy. You have an air of something about you. I don't know what. Goodness? Chastity?"

No man had ever said anything like that to her before - not even Frank - and she wasn't at all sure what to say back. She could deny it, but then he knew the truth of it. She was no virgin in any way, shape or form. So instead of saying anything and inevitably sticking her foot in her mouth in doing so, she instead planted a very chaste kiss on his cheek. "Thank you for the compliment, Thomas."

"You're welcome," he replied, bending down to her ear. "But it's your much less pristine side that I fantasize about when I'm alone in bed at night."

At that she practically pushed him out her door, pretending and outrage she certainly didn't feel. Lacy stood in the doorway long after he'd gone, not really sure what had transpired between the two of them, but knowing that, regardless of what it was, she was in desperate need of a change of underwear.


	6. Chapter 6

She really hadn't thought about whether or not she'd hear from him while he was gone, but she certainly did, in practically every manner of communication except carrier pigeon and pony express.

Texts arrived frequently - usually him complaining of being bored, sometimes with pictures attached of what he was waiting to do or had done. It seemed to her that acting was comprised of a ton of time just doing nothing while other stuff was going on. He sent her a picture of his lunch, himself first thing in the morning, and a dog that he thought looked like Peewee.

There was an email waiting for her one morning - not too long, not too short - saying how he was going to be pretty much incommunicado for a few days and that he'd get back to her then.

It was the end of the first week - the Friday before the first weekend he was gone - before she heard from him again.

It was a text, short and sweet.

 _Do you Skype_?

It had been so long that she didn't really even know if her laptop had a built in camera, but it did and she found it, then she signed up for Skype..

I do now.

She gave him her Skype name.

 _Good. What're you doing Saturday night?_

Nothing. She was always doing nothing, but she didn't need to let him know that.

I think I'm free, or could make myself so. Why?

Tom wasn't very happy with that response. He hadn't gotten the sense that she was seeing anyone else, but it was certainly a possibility. He made a mental note to pump Emma for information about that.

 _Wanna have dinner together via Skype?_

Oh, come on. Do you mean to tell me that you don't have a date on a Saturday night? You?!

 _. . . I'll have a date if you accept my invitation._

How could she still blush at his behest when he was miles away from her?

Okay. When?

 _Well, there's a time difference. So why don't we say eight o'clock your time._

Okay.

 _See you then, lovely. I have to get back to work._

She'd said "okay" twice already. Damn.

Great. Talk to you then, then.

"Then, then"? What an idiot she was. And she was a professional writer! That man had her tongue _and_ finger-tied, if that was even a word. She couldn't even begin to think intelligently around him, and he left her so breathless she felt like she be carrying an oxygen tank around with her, just in case.

What did she have that would suit for a pseudo-date? Nothing that wasn't dog hair covered, that was for sure. Did she want to buy something new for him? Or should she adopt a "love me as I am" attitude? She definitely leaned towards the latter.

That attitude lasted until she was standing in front of her closet Saturday morning, systematically rejecting everything she owned - mostly because what she owned were slobby, sloppy clothes that ran to uber-comfortable rather than stylish.

So Saturday afternoon found her shopping, and, having no idea what size she wore here, she had to try shit on, which she hated every ever loving minute of.

She was ready at seven, but then she was perpetually early for most things - except deadlines. Dinner was her next problem. She didn't want to eat something messy - she knew herself too well. She still needed to wear a bib; the girls were terrible crumb catchers. If she made spaghetti or lasagna or anything else that could possibly stain her outfit, she'd spill ninety percent of it all over herself, she just knew it. So she wanted something neutral, and luckily her favorite chicken casserole fit all of the requirements - easy to eat and unlikely to spill.

Lacy poured herself a glass of Diet Coke with ice and a squirt of lemon in a pretty cut glass tumbler at about ten of eight and put it on the end table next to her chair where all her other crap was, then took her bowl of chicken and veggies out of the microwave and put it, as well as a spoon with which to eat it, on the same table.

With a nervous sigh, she pulled her laptop onto her lap and signed into Skype.

He was already there and called her immediately; her screen filled with him and he took her breath away, smiling at her as always and looking too gorgeous for words. "Good evening, little one. It's so good to see you. I've missed you."

Damn, his voice - even through her computer's atrocious speakers sounded effing amazing, sending a chill through her that she wasn't sure how to handle.

"I'm sorry, but would you hold on a sec?" she asked, before she even greeted him. "I need to make an adjustment." Why she'd decided to do this and torture herself even further, she didn't know. Maybe she was a masochist at heart.

When she got back to him, she returned his smile. It really was good to see him. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed him until she'd seen him again. "Hi, Tom!"

He liked her enthusiasm and he couldn't seem to stop smiling at her like an idiot. "How are you?"

She had connected a Bose bluetooth speaker to her computer. His voice sounded infinitely better, although she wasn't sure she was going to survive the experience. Every word he said reverberated through her; its effects travelling directly to that sensitive area between her legs. "I'm fine. How are you? How's your work going?"

He regaled her with several funny stories about things that had happened to him, then he said, "So what's been going on with you? I'm monopolizing the conversation."

As far as she was concerned, she didn't need to say another word. "Oh, please. you know I'm incredibly boring in comparison to you. Besides, I'd much rather listen to you."

He laughed. "And I'd rather listen to you." He frowned. "And speaking of listening, I should have made up a playlist for us to both listen to as we were eating. Next time," he promised. His eyes narrowed as he leaned towards his iPad to get a better look at her. "Is that a new top?"

"It's one you haven't seen yet, yes," Lacy answered, feeling inordinately pleased that he'd noticed.

"So, can I see all of what you're wearing?" he asked, trying not to sound lascivious as he did so, but he was dying to see more of the pink fuzzy sweater that clung so lovingly to her curves - the way his hands and mouth were positively itching to. "Is that sweater as soft as it looks?"

"Um, I guess so," she answered to both questions, putting him down on the seat of her chair and standing in front of the camera, watching herself in the picture in picture so she could see what he was seeing.

"Turn around."

The sweater had a bit of a diamond shaped cut out that revealed her bare back between her bra straps, with a bow across the top to close the gap.

"Are those new jeans?"

"Yeah. Mine are kind of grubby, so I'm trying to phase them out."

"Mmmmm," he groaned appreciatively. "Very nice."

Lacy sat back down and put him onto her lap again. "Okay, your turn," she said, mostly joking, but he didn't hesitate in the least to do the same thing for her - and he was bare to the waist, wearing only pajama bottoms, which hung low enough that she had reasonable cause to think that he probably wasn't wearing anything beneath them.

"Holy shit!" It came out of her mouth before she had a chance to stop it, as she was taking in the stunning sight of him with a painful gulp.

"What?" he looked concerned, reacting to the alarm in her tone.

She giggled, though, through the hand that was at her mouth. "Nothing, I just didn't know this was going to be a half _nekkid_ pajama party rather than the date it was purported to be."

He picked her back up, asking as he did it, "Are you in the living room?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm in my hotel room, so I'm in bed. It's been a tiring week and I just want to relax, so I got into my pajamas. Do you mind?"

Grinning like an idiot, she put the back of her hand to her forehead, her voice deliberately breathy. "Yes, my delicate sensibilities have been horribly offended by the sight of your superbly naked chest, you uncouth cad! Besides, I was expecting suit porn and I got half a set of pajamas - not that I'm objecting all that much, you realize."

He frowned. "Suit porn?"

Damn, had she really said that out loud? "Yeah, just a stupid phrase."

Luckily for her, he let it go. "Well, why don't you get comfortable, too?"

"What do you mean?" She had a good idea, but was stalling for time.

"Take me into your bedroom, get into your pajamas and be comfortable in bed while we eat and chat."

"Um, okay." All she could think of was the mess that her bedroom was in, and whether or not she had a cute enough pair of pajamas to show him. She unplugged the laptop and closed it.

"Hey, wait! Where'd you go?"

"I'm going to carry you into the bedroom."

"Well, you could let me look at you while you did that, you know."

"You are a demanding cuss, you know that?"

That got her an ehe he he he, but she did as he asked, but ended up leaving him in the bedroom while she ran back and got her dinner stuff and the speaker.

"All I can see are pillows!" he complained loudly.

"That was the general idea. Be happy you're seeing that. My room is a pit."

He could hear that she was coming back into he room with him. "What are you doing now?"

"Getting into my pajamas."

"Oh, I don't suppose I could convince you to turn me around so I could see?" he wheedled.

"Not on a bet, honey."

"Damn. I had to try."

"Of course you did. You'd have to turn in your Male of the Species card if you didn't."

"What are you doing right now?"

She wasn't at all sure she should tell him, but figured what the heck. "I'm putting away the sweater I was wearing in my dresser."

"Are you in your bra and panties?"

"Do you honestly think I'm going to tell you that?"

"What would be the harm, Lacy? It would just be fodder for my fantasies - nothing more." His voice was soft and soothing, deliberately, expertly, she suspected, devoid of anything like a demand.

"I'm in my panties, pulling my nightshirt over my head." She wasn't sure if that was a groan she heard or not. She ended up in her "Fairy Pink" Tinkerbell nightshirt - which was a bit too big for her now and she'd have to be careful with how the front wanted to gape open down to her toes - with a pair of panties that weren't sold with them but that were of the same color pink and had Tinkerbell all over them, so they looked like a set. It was the best she could do on short notice.

She turned him around as she got into bed, but he objected.

"Uh uh uhhh. Nope. You're not getting off that easy - so to speak. I want another fashion show."

Lacy was of a mind to deny him, but instead she put him on the edge of the bed, angling the camera so there was a full length shot of her.

"Tinkerbell! Really?" He didn't seem to be unhappy, just surprised.

She knew she was blushing to beat the band. "Yeah, I've always had a thing for Tink. She soothes my inner five year old."

"I may have some good news for you then, eventually, in that vein, but I can't talk about it now."

"Okay."

"You look adorable, Lacy love. Barely legal, especially with your hair in that ponytail."

She choked. "Barely legal indeed, Tom Hiddleston." She made as if to get onto the bed again, but his command stopped her in the act.

"Wait!"

She was bent over, with the nightshirt gaping open so that he could probably see all the way to her panties, she realized with alarm. Lacy made a belated grab at the neckline. "What?"

"I want to see your panties, too. Do they match? What kind are they?"

"They do, and they're hip hugger briefs, but I'm not going to show them to you," she answered primly, although she made no move to get back on the bed, either.

She saw him just sitting there in bed, his back propped up against pillows, with her in his lap, watching her intently, and she could see the steady rise and fall of his chest. "Lacy, I want you to do this for me, love. Show me your panties."

He watched her fidget, practically stomping her foot at one point - at the imposition of what didn't sound much like a request - and wasn't - struggling with whether or not she was going to obey him and he thought it was going to drive him to distraction just to watch her deciding. He wasn't at all sure what he was going to do if she opted to defy him, but he figured he'd deal with that when and if it happened.

Eventually, with a loud tsk and an exasperated sigh, she reached for the hem of her nightshirt and pulled it up just in the front to just barely above the top of the panties. "See?" then she let the material cover them again.

"Lacy."

She was beginning to hate that particular tone of his voice because she was loving it entirely too much. She should have known he wasn't going to let her get away with being so stingy about giving him a good view of her panties.

"Please pull your nightshirt out of the way, up around your waist and hold it there, then do a full turn for me."

Well, he _had_ said please . . . and she _had_ already actually shown them to him . . .

Without another peep she did exactly as he told her to do, earning an appreciative groan that sizzled through her, landing right where the panties covered.

"Absolutely beautiful," he sighed.

She was glad he couldn't see the wet spot her body was now creating on them.

"Hop up on the bed and let's eat, what do you say?"

She was more than happy to do as he asked this time, and was careful about not exposing herself while she did so.

"What's for dinner, love?" he asked.

"Chicken casserole - my favorite recipe." It was cold now, but she didn't give a damn.

"What's in it?"

She told him the ingredients and he secured from her a promise that she would make it for him sometime because he thought it sounded yummy.

"What about you?" she asked.

He showed her a large, clear glass with some kind of green liquid in it that she recognized immediately. "It was supposed to be breakfast this morning, but I forgot, so I'm having it now."

"A green smoothie! I remember those!"

She'd managed to surprise him yet again. "You do?"

"Yes, my husband drank them when we first got together - they made him feel really great, he said. He made his with kale and berries and almond milk and vanilla and a touch of artificial sweetener."

"I use romaine and apples, but same general idea. Did you drink them, too?"

That had her laughing hysterically. "Hell, no."

"Of course not," he agreed indulgently, grinning. "How could I possibly think that this was a drink fit for a princess?"

She'd never called herself that in front of him, but he'd pegged her perfectly without any help, and she found herself blushing yet again. "No, it's not. It's a drink for a knight in shining armor; the one who is sworn to protect the princess, who needs to be strong and brave for her." Her eyes filled with tears that she was desperate to blink back. "That's what he used to say, anyway."

Tom smiled gently. "Sounds like he was a very smart, wonderfully perceptive man."

"Oh, he was, especially when it came to me." She dashed away the tears that had escaped and were rolling down her cheeks.

Tom wished he was there with her in so many ways, but mainly in that he wanted to kiss away those tears; her unhappiness made him feel helpless in a way he wasn't at all used to, to say nothing of the fact that it made his heart ache abominably, as it hadn't for any other woman he'd ever been involved with.

"Let's toast," he said, holding his glass up to the camera.

She reached for her glass of soda and did the same.

"To long distance slumber party dinners with you."

"Hear, hear!" she agreed, clinking her glass with his against the screen and over the miles.

He kept her talking and laughing - mostly laughing - while she ate and he drank, as he told her stories of growing up with his two sisters and being away at school from such a young age, and of when he first began to try acting.

A while after she'd finished her last bite, he asked, entirely unable to keep the hopeful out of his voice, "Do you have anything for dessert?"

He sounded very eager for her to, but she didn't. "No, I don't usually keep sweets in the house or I'll eat them before anything that's good for me."

"Damn, I was going to eat it vicariously through you. Ah, but you're wise not to keep them around. You need to take better care of yourself in general, you know."

Her reply was as nasal and annoying as she could make it. "Yes, dear."

His look was unmistakable, chin down, gazing intently at her from under that furrowed brow and despite the considerable distance between them, her entire lower body spasmed without him having to say a word. It was "the" look, the one she used to get from her husband when he was feeling better. "I don't like your tone, Lacy. And it should be 'yes, Sir'." He carefully didn't beleaguer the point. "Tell me, how long has it been since you've had a cigarette?"

She gulped, knowing she had to decide quickly as to whether or not she was going to tell him the truth. And considering that look, she knew she really didn't have much choice about the matter. "Hmmm. What time is it?" she asked, trying to be funny, but when she snuck a look at him, he wasn't laughing.

She sat back against her pillows. "Oh, I don't know. It's been a while. Not since sometime between when we first met and your birthday, I guess."

That was a reasonable span of time. "Great! I'm proud of you!"

His praise, too, went where it wasn't wanted or needed, but it also made her smile and blush.

"Your blush matches the color of your nightgown - so your skin matches your clothes. I like that. I like making you blush."

Lacy rolled her eyes. "You're entirely too damned good at it."

He heard the dog barking in the background. "Is Peewee okay?"

"Yeah, she needs to go out."

"Take me with you on your phone."

She got that all arranged, pulled on some sweats and a sweatshirt, and they all went out for the dog's evening constitutional. He listened to her telling Peewee to go potty a thousand times. "Damn, you nag that dog!" he laughed.

"Well, I'm not out here for my health, and she's just touristing, reading all the other dog's calling cards. She's not planting the friggin' Eiffel tower; she's pooping, for crying out loud, and I want her to get it the hell over with."

That had him laughing even louder.

"Oh damn, Peewee, if you have to do that, at least have the manners to do it in the house, huh?" he heard her whine at the dog.

"What's she doing now?" He could see that they were turning back towards her place, and that Lacy had colored prettily again at his question.

"Well, she did what she needed to do and she's gotten into the habit of, well, uh, cleaning herself on the spot, so to speak, rather than waiting until we're inside."

"Oh. Okay."

"I've always thought that if I could reach, I'd never leave the house."

His out and out guffaw was her reward for saying something that audacious. "You haven't heard much George Carlin, have you, Tom?"

"None that I know of."

She tsked loudly. "You haven't done much living for a guy in your profession."

"I beg to differ."

Lacy groaned. "I have a line for that, but I don't believe I'm going to say it."

"Oh, come on. It's not fair to tease me like that."

She just laughed. "Puh-leeze. Teasing you is half the fun."

"Just remember, Lacy St. James, that payback's a bitch."

"Sure thing, Hiddleston. I'm shaking in my . . . " she looked down at her slipper sock covered feet and made him look, too, " - not boots."

He laughed at that, but didn't say anything while she fussed with the dog, picking her up, removing her leash and putting her in her crate for the evening.

"Why don't you get under the covers, honey, and I will, too. Put me on the pillow next to you."

"I can do better than that." She arranged the computer so that it was partially opened on its side, facing her, the angle of the parts keeping him pretty stable as she did what he asked, turning to face him as he did the same thing with her. It was very much as if he was lying in bed next to her.

"Very nice," he breathed.

"You look tired, Thomas. Are you okay?"

"I am tired, but that's fine. You don't have to worry about me, Lacy. I'm healthy as a horse." He figured - correctly - that considering what had happened with her husband, she might have a little leftover concern about health issues in regards to whomever she might become involved with.

"That's very reassuring to hear. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I want you to be able to relax with me - to let me take care of you."

She wasn't looking at him when she responded, "That's not what I'm used to. Frank would have done an amazing job of it if he'd been able to, I know. All of the protective, gentlemanly impulses that you have were in him, too. He just couldn't really _do_ them. He did what he could, though."

Tom shook his head. "I understand, baby. He sounds like a great man."

Her voice husky with unshed tears, she said, "He was. You two would have liked each other."

He startled the tears out of her when he snorted and said vehemently, "No, we wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I would have been after his wife in a heartbeat, I hate to say. That's not a very gentlemanly thing to admit, but there you have it."

"Aw . . . oh. Hmmmmm." Should she be flattered or offended? "I'm not sure how to react to that."

He chuckled. "It's just conjecture. You don't have to feel any way at all about it."

She couldn't control it; it just happened. She yawned, loudly, even though it was only about eleven.

That got him laughing. "Am I keeping you awake with my scintillating conversation?"

"Oh, dear God, I'm so sorry! It's not the company, believe me. I - " This was something she'd never admitted to anyone but her doctor. "I haven't slept well since - since Frank died. I need about nine hours of sleep a night, and I'm lucky if I get three or four. I have nightmares and I'm up a lot in the night, and then the dog gets me up at six or seven or so . . . I'm constantly functioning sleep deprived."

He frowned, not at all happy with what he was hearing. "Oh, wow, that's not good. You need your sleep. Why don't you try to go to sleep right now, while I'm with you? Maybe having someone around - sort of by proxy - will help."

She'd never thought about that. Emma was gone so much that she was essentially living alone. Perhaps he was right.

Tom didn't wait for her to say yes or no, he proceeded as if she was going to agree with him, and Lacy couldn't find it in herself to contradict his highhandedness, although she knew she should have.

"You're already in your jammies; are you all tucked up?"

"Yes."

Was her voice a little higher, almost as if she was a little girl? he wondered, but he figured he was mishearing her. "Anything else you need to do before you go to sleep?"

She sat bolt upright. "Yeah, bathroom. Be right back."

"I'll be here." He wouldn't have minded if she'd taken him with her. One of the things he liked about being a couple was the small intimacies - sharing the bathroom for morning or evening ablutions.

She was back quickly, under the covers, reaching to turn out her light.

"Okay, so, in what position do you usually fall asleep? Do you need to move me?"

"No, Frank was always on my left and I always fell asleep in his arms originally then moved to sleep by myself because he worked at night."

"So you're good right here. I wish there was some way to simulate my arms around you, but make yourself comfortable."

She arranged her pillows, took the scrunchie out of her hair and kept it carefully out from under herself as she settled in.

Tom watched her avidly, wishing it was his pillow that was graced by those beautiful waves. "Close your eyes."

"No! Then I can't see you!"

"You're not supposed to see me," he scolded lightly, "you're supposed to be sleeping."

Petulantly, "I hate it _so much_ when you're right."

He chuckled softly. "So, what can I do to help you get to sleep?"

"Tell me a story!"

Definitely a little girl voice that time, whether conscious or unconscious. "I think that that would be a bit too involved. You're supposed to be going to sleep not following a plot."

Her lower lip pouted fiercely and he almost laughed, but managed to maintain a straight face, barely. "How about if I sing you something?"

Her eyes opened wide. "Would you?"

"Of course. I have to warn you, though, that once you hear me sing you might not be quite as eager to have me continue. But your eyes _do_ have to be closed, my love." He waited until she'd obeyed him. "What should I sing? Hmmmmm." He thought about it for a moment, quickly running through a list of songs in his mind, dismissing his favorite _Bear Necessities_ because it was too bouncy, then it came to him. He brought the lyrics up on his phone and began with a low whisper, "Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three." And then he began to sing very softly, _"Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination . . . "_

Unfortunately, her reaction was exactly the opposite of what he was going for. He barely got through the first verse before he could se that she was bawling even though her eyes were closed. They were squinched up and she had put him close enough to her that he could see the dark stain of tears on the pillow beneath her head.

"Lacy, honey, what is it?"

It took her a long moment to marshal her emotions enough to be able to answer him. "It's you!" she wailed.

Truly startled by what sounded almost like an accusation, he asked, "What'd I do?"

She really didn't want to tell him exactly what was going on in her head, so she settled for a lesser truth. "You're too fucking nice for words and it's just killing me!"

"Too nice?" It was an inane thing to say, but he was desperate to figure out what was wrong, especially since just the idea of her crying from something he'd done was killing _him_ since he wasn't there to hold her.

Lacy could hear how confused she had made him by saying that, and sighed brokenly. He deserved the truth from her. It was the least she could do for him when he was always so wonderful to her.

She opened her eyes to stare directly into his. She felt so connected to him, suddenly, somehow, that he might as well have been there in the bed with her. She could almost feel his arms around her. "Your . . . instincts with me - how you've treated me since . . . since we met and became . . . well, whatever it is that we are at this moment . . . " She cleared her throat and knew she was going to say something that might well change the course of her life, "they're absolutely _spot on_. Frankly, if I didn't know that you were already walking around when my husband died, I would have said you were him incarnate, and that's just about the best compliment I could ever give any man."

He had despaired of soothing her from so far away and that made him feel awful, but then she told him something like this and he felt like the Grinch after his heart grew three sizes; his was full to bursting at her words. He knew his face was an unbecoming shade of neon red, but he didn't care. He was smiling so big that his face was beginning to hurt. "Well, that's . . . that's wonderful to hear, Lacy, because I really want to be right for you. I always want you to be happy, but I also always want whatever I do to be the best thing for you, whether you like it or not."

He saw her close her eyes and a single tear trailed down her cheek that he physically ached reach out and brush away with the side of his thumb.

"Damn you're good," she breathed. "You're channeling Frank almost directly. He used to sing to me whenever I had trouble getting to sleep, only he sang _You Are My Sunshine_."

He gave a soft "he he" at that, then it was his turn to be serious. He leaned forward, so that her screen was filled with his face, whispering huskily, "It comes easily with you. I - " he hesitated, not wanting to overplay his hand. "I care about you very much, Lacy."

She knew she should say something equally as revealing back to him about her feelings - which she certainly did have for him - but she deliberately hadn't spent much time exploring them. "I've grown . . . extremely fond of you, too, Tom. And I don't mean to damn you with faint praise. I'm just reeling from the idea that I feel _anything_ for _any_ man - much less a man who's not Frank - and a gorgeous, smart, funny man like you - it's kind of overwhelming. I had pretty much figured that the romantic part of my life was over, and now here _you_ are, in all of your glory. It's . . . " she searched for just the right word. "It's daunting."

His expression softened. "I understand, I do. And I'm not going anywhere. We'll take it slow." He addressed her next concern without her even having to voice it. She figured that some time in the not too distant future, he was going to get bored with her. Tom was a young, unimaginably sexy man, and she was asking him to put his needs on hold for her, indefinitely at this point, and she couldn't - realistically - see that happening for very long.

"I do want to ask you a question, though, and it's a very personal question about your intimate relationship with your husband."

"Okay," she replied, instantly on alert.

He fidgeted a bit, which - since she watched him compulsively whenever the opportunity presented itself - she knew he didn't do that very often, so it must be something he wasn't all that comfortable with asking. "Was your husband . . . " he wanted to put this as delicately, neutrally as he could find the words for, "what might be considered in, old fashioned terms, to be the head of your household?"

Lacy's eyebrow - as well as her color - rose at his choice of words, and she looked away from him when she answered. "Yes, I think that's a pretty good way of describing certain aspects of our relationship in the early days, before he got too sick for that kind of thing." She hoped he wasn't going to ask anything more, because she wasn't at all sure she wanted to discuss this with him now, and probably out of stress - as well as exhaustion - she yawned loudly again.

He was lying there with huge smile on his face and she wasn't at all sure she liked it. "Thank you for answering me honestly."

Lacy shrugged. "It's not easy for me to talk about, but I can't see lying to you about it - that would just lead to problems down the road." She hazarded a peek at him again and the smile was gone, he was just looking at her with that ridiculously beautiful face of his, seeming satisfied and happy. "We haven't really gotten to the point yet of discussing our intimate tastes, but you could definitely say that that was a big one of mine."

His eyes widened at that admission, and he didn't smile, which she wasn't sure was a good thing or not. "I understand completely. You don't have to say anything more, Lacy. I asked because I suspected what the answer was going to be and I just had to know it, but I also know we're not quite ready for this discussion yet, although I'm certainly looking forward to it." He waggled his eyebrows comically just to get her to laugh.

Lacy knew he was using "we" when he really meant that she wasn't ready yet, but it was the thoughtful thing to do. She yawned again and he prompted, "Why don't you lay your head back down and close your eyes for me."

"Tom?"

"Yes, baby?"

She blushed a bit and he wondered what she was going to ask him. "Would you just talk to me for a little while - I love the idea of you singing me to sleep, but apparently I'm not emotionally equipped to handle that yet. I like falling asleep to a familiar voice. It doesn't have to be anything interesting - its better if it isn't, actually."

"Of course. Are you all tucked up again?"

She nodded.

"Don't worry about Skype. I called you and I'll disconnect the call when I can see that you're asleep."

Her eyes opened, and he gave her a bit of a scolding look, but she pre-empted whatever he was going to say. "Thank you. You made it a wonderful long distance slumber party dinner."

"As you did for me, darling. Now, no more stalling. I don't want you to open your eyes or speak again unless it's an emergency; you need to get some sleep." His words were delivered in a perfect mix of light warning and warm caretaking.

He sifted through his mind for the things he could recite to her, and chose several long passages from Romeo and Juliet, playing both parts with equal ability but deliberately not changing his voice between the two characters so that she heard the same tone, knowing that would make her sleepy faster.

It didn't take very long at all before he could see her deep, steady breathing, her mouth parted just slightly, and he allowed himself a long, thorough look at her innocent visage, almost appalled at just how aroused he was by watching her sleep - although that was not the full measure of what he was feeling by any means. She inspired a myriad of soulfully deep emotions in him, but it happened that lust was at the top of the list at this moment.

"Good night, my princess," he murmured, wishing he could lean over and press a soft kiss to her cheek as he, with no small amount of regret, hitting the button to disconnect their call.


End file.
